Phantom

Reserve an operand's dimensions while hiding all its ink, including colored children, backgrounds, and cancellation marks.

Property	Default	Meaning
children	Empty	Hidden operand.
horizontal	true	Retain horizontal advance.
vertical	true	Retain height, depth, and baseline.

horizontal={true} retains advance and vertical={true} retains height, depth, and baseline. Both default to true. Set vertical={false} for an \hphantom-like box or horizontal={false} for a \vphantom-like box. Strings parse as TeX; ordinary Gum operands are accepted.

The parsed \phantom{…} preserves the surrounding sequence's atom spacing, including binary cancellation across its edges. A phantom has no ink or child overflow. Use Smash to retain ink while removing vertical extents, or Lap to retain ink with zero advance.