It defines a set of variables. It is equivalent to the setVariable method of Component, if it has a parent component, and Page, if it is declared at the page level.
As depicted below, variables is convenient to assign variables without programming.
<window>
<variables rich="simple" simple="intuitive"/>
</window>
It is equivalent to
<window>
<zscript>
self.setVariable("rich", "simple", false);
self.setVariable("simple", "intuitive", false);
</zscript>
</window>
Of course, you can specify EL expressions for the values.
<window>
<window id="w" title="Test">
<variables title="${w.title}"/> 
1: ${title}
</window>
2: ${title}
</window>
Like Component's setVariable, you can control whether to declare variables local to the current ID space as follows. If not specified, local="false" is assumed.
<variables simple="rich" local="true"/>