In Xport, the term type may used to refer to a class template typed alias. C++ programmers are mostly used to working with classes, but using the term class in Xport would many times be misleading, as Xport consists entirely of class templates. Xport typedefs class definitions as type aliases, or types using type definitions, like the following.

In this example, the class template xhtml_doc is being typedefed into the type alias document. So we say that document is a type alias, or type.

In Xport, developers normally work with Xport's types rather than with the class templates themselves, to avoid the messiness involved with working with class templates.