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Publication tooling

Ken Franqueiro
Denis Ah-Kang

TPAC 2025
Kobe, Japan & online
10–14 November 2025

Agenda

Bikeshed support for spec-generator
- Demo
- Replacement of https://api.csswg.org/bikeshed/?
Shared metadata between bikeshed and respec
- Why do we want shared metadata?
- Ideas: metadata file located next to the spec, repo-based metadata source, ...

1/ spec-generator: Bikeshed support

Current state of spec-generator:

Only support respec documents
Used by pr-preview

Bikeshed support

Test instance (Ken's branch): CSS Color 5

Features in common between CSSWG API and spec-generator

Both spec and issues-list
Configurable publication date
die-on support
Arbitrary metadata via md-<key>

spec-generator includes more values in die-on field

Differences between CSSWG API and spec-generator

Only in CSSWG API:
- Textarea input
- Error output (likely TODO for spec-generator)
Only in spec-generator:
- Issues list via URL
- Prepare for TR checkbox (likely possible via HTTP in CSSWG API, but not exposed in HTML)

How strong is demand for the textarea? Arguably, file upload accomplishes the same
Force is redundant with die-on=nothing, so is not explicitly replicated
In CSSWG, time seems equivalent to md-date?

2/ Why do we want shared metadata?

Less specific generator options/metadata
Metadata reusability by other tools
Facilitates automatic updates and maintenance

Dependent project: CG specification lifecycle

Ideas

JSON file next to the specification
Repository containing all the metadata + JS script to handle the metadata
Other approach?