Variables are expected to be highlighted by the UI, normally appearing in a shade of electric blue. However, this only applies if the variable is declared using quote marks. Variables declared without these, even though perfectly valid for KaSim, are not highlighted as variables. For example:
%var: Foo 1
%var: 'Baz' 2
Is displayed as:

Considering that inputs.ka files tend to strip variable names of their user-given flanking quotes if they don't contain certain characters (e.g. |), this highlighting inconsistency becomes rampant.