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The concept of presentation types is central to CLIM. Client code can choose to output graphical or textual representations of application objects either as just graphics or text, or to associate such output with an arbitrary Common Lisp object and a presentation type. The presentation type is not necessarily related to the idea Common Lisp might have of the underlying object.
When a CLIM command or some other client code requests an object (say as an argument) of a certain presentation type, the user of the application can satisfy the request by clicking on any visible output labeled with a compatible presentation type. The command then receives the underlying Common Lisp object as a response to the request.
CLIM presentation types are usually distinct from Common Lisp types. The reason is that the Common Lisp type system, although very powerful, is not quite powerful enough to represent the kind of relationships between types that are required by CLIM. However, every Common Lisp class (except the built-in classes) is automatically a presentation type.
A presentation type has a name, but can also have one or more parameters. Parameters of presentation types are typically used to restrict the type. For instance, the presentation type integer takes as parameters the low and the high values of an interval. Such parameters allow the application to restrict objects that become clickable in certain contexts, for instance if a date in the month of March is requested, only integers between 1 and 31 should be clickable.