Ooo. Gee, hey, we're talking some pretty straightforward and self-explanatory stuff here (pertaining to meaning, not numbers). If you play the game and correlate what you see there to what you see in the raws, you should understand more clearly.
First of all, all MATGLOSS entries could have just as well been stuffed into one file. Filename makes no difference as long as it starts with "matgloss_". MATGLOSS_STONE, MATGLOSS_METAL, MATGLOSS_PLANT, MATGLOSS_WOOD are the four different variants. They share numerous tags.
BOILING, MELTING, IGNITE, HEATDAM, COLDDAM and other _POINTs, FIXED_TEMP and all their derivatives use degrees on the Toady scale. Figuring it out may be as complex as trying to use Total Annihilation's 64k degree rotation system, but I usually assume (wrongly, no doubt, but reasonably true) that the numbers are degrees on the Fahrenheit scale, +10000.
The _POINT temperature effects should be self-explanatory. Materials will melt, burn, or evaporate at specified temperatures. Just in case, I will note that solid natural walls made of the material are not affected by temperature. HEATDAM and COLDDAM indicate temperature at which an object made of the material will take damage and become worn. SPEC_HEAT is probably a measure of how fast a material accumulates temperature, but I couldn't notice any effect of this, and there's no info on the measurement units. FIXED_TEMP means a material will always have a certain temperature, regardless of what surrounds it.
NONE for any temperature means unlimited, or unaffecting. NONE for ignite temperature will make an object impossible to ignite. I didn't test for FIXED_TEMP effects.
SOLID_DENSITY and LIQUID_DENSITY determine how much anything made of the material weighs. The units are again uncertain, but the game provides some values to relate to.
COLOR is well, the color. The first two accept numbers 0 to 7, 0 being black, 7 being white, 6 being yellow, and I don't remember the rest. The first number is the symbol color, the second is the background color of a tile. The third number is a switch, whether or not the symbol color uses lighter or darker colors. Light black becomes dark grey. Dark white become light grey. The second color seems to always use dark colors.
BASIC_COLOR I am unsure of, I'm unsure if it's even used, but it must follow the same scheme, either omitting the brightness switch or the background color.
There's also BUILD_COLOR, it determines the color of a building made of the material. Syntax same as color.
Now for specifics.
Metals:
[BRITTLE] means no item can be made of the material. Basically marks it as an ingredient-only metal to make alloys.
[DEEP] probably has more uses, but the most apparent is disallowing the metal's use in everyday life by creatures, including forbidding it for choice at embark.
[BLOCK_PERC] and [DAMAGE_PERC] amplify the damage (for weapons) or block rate (for armor), by the percent assigned.
Stone:
[ENVIRONMENT] and [ENVIRONMENT_SPEC] specify where a certain stone will appear. Both take an identifier, a distribution type, and rate. For ENVIRONMENT, the identifier is a stone layer type, like METAMORPHIC (plus specific cases like ALL_STONE and IGNEOUS_ALL). For ENVIRONMENT_SPEC it's a stone material ID, like GABBRO. Distribution types are CLUSTER, CLUSTER_SMALL, CLUSTER_ONE and VEIN, all pretty straightforward if you've played the game.
[GEM] replaces a NAME tag, plus marks the stone as gem-bearing. The words it takes are singular and plural forms, with STP meaning "standard plural" for when only an "s" at the end is required.
[GLASS] is supposed to only affect gems. It marks the stone as a material out of which crystal glass is made.
[AQUIFER][SOIL][SOIL_SAND][SOIL_OCEAN] mark the specific properties of the stone, whether it's counted as soil, ocean floor soil, collectable sand, or aquifer-bearing. Usually this is applied to layer stone, specified by tags like [METAMORPHIC], [IGNEOUS_EXTRUSIVE], and so forth for any layer type. You can add any layer-marking tag to any stone, and that stone will appear in appropriate places as a layer, while retaining its individual placement rules.
REACTION_CLASS is used for referencing multiple stones as one word, in reactions. If you add REACTION_CLASS:ORE to all metal ores, you will be able to reference the phrase "any metal ore" in reactions as [REAGENT:1:REACTION_CLASS:ORE].
For wood, [SAPLING] seems to mean that the trees start growing as saplings. Specific effect has not been determined, or at least I am not aware of it.
Detailed enough?
[ June 05, 2008: Message edited by: Sean Mirrsen ]