Property slot tags can be in all <graph>, <object>, <relationship>, <role> and <port> tags. Below we assume an object type for simplicity.

A slot can specify an id and/or name attribute. The value of the id attribute is the internal identifier of the property slot for that object type. The value of the name attribute is the local name of the property in that object type. When exporting, both are specified. When importing, if the id attribute matches a property slot in the object type, the name attribute is ignored. If the id attribute is not present or does not match, the name attribute is used to find the correct slot in the object.

The simplest way to specify slots is to have a slot tag for each property, in the same order as the properties are defined in the object type. In this case the slot tag may not specify an id or name attribute. The simplest content for a slot tag is just a <value> tag, containing the property value inside a tag that names its data type, e.g. <string>property value</string>.

If an id or name attribute is specified for even one slot in an object, all must specify name and/or id. However, you need not specify a <slot> tag for every slot in an object: if a slot in an object has no matching <slot> tag, it will be created with its default property type and value.

A slot contains an optional <property> tag. The <property> tag has a type and oid attribute like other GOPPRR tags, and no other content. When importing, the <property> tag is normally omitted: MetaEdit+ can determine the correct property type from the slot information, and creates an instance of that. If you want a property to be shared between two objects you are importing, the first can specify a <property> tag with a type attribute and id attribute (not oid), and the second can specify a <property> tag with just an href attribute.

A slot contains an optional <value> tag. If no <value> tag is specified, the default value for the property type will be used. The <value> tag specifies the actual value of this property, within a tag. For simple values, the tag name is the name of the property data type, and the tag content is the value of the property.

Note that the Number data type is split into int and float, since XML Schema does not contain a generic number type. Also, string and text values use XML escapes &lt; for <, &amp; for &, and &gt; for > (> need not be escaped when importing, but is escaped when exporting).

If the value of a property is an object, graph, relationship, role or port, the value tag simply contains the appropriate element and its sub-elements:

<value>
  <object type="State [Watch]">
    <slot>
      <value>
        <string>Running</string>
      </value>
    </slot>
  </object>
</value>

A property value can also be a collection of strings, or of objects, graphs, relationships, roles or ports. In this case the value tag contains a single <seq> tag that contains a series of <string> or <object> etc. tags:

<value>
  <seq>
    <object type="State [Watch]"> ... </object>
    <object type="State [Watch]"> ... </object>
    <object type="State [Watch]"> ... </object>
  </seq>
</value>