Re: [csswg-drafts] [meta] Creating an author-focused entry point summarizing the state of CSS (#4752)

From the point of view of someone going through the Snapshot document—either for authoring CSS or developing an application which implements CSS—it’s a rather difficult read. One thing I find particularly challenging is that the CSS2 specification is still incorporated in full, even though significant parts of that specification have been updated or replaced by modules. When reading the CSS2 specification, you need to constantly cross-reference other documents to know whether the part of the spec you are reading is still relevant—or it if has errata, or has been replaced by modules.

I think it would be helpful to provide either one of:
* A merged single specification document incorporating the text of the CSS2.1 specification+errata, along with the text of all module specifications in the “Reliable CR” state, with the text from the module specifications replacing the text from the CSS2 specification that they supersede, or
* A “CSS Snapshot Base” document which contains the CSS2.1 specification+errata, except with portions of the specification that have been superseded by modules in the “Reliable CR” state removed (or replaced by links to modules).

I’m not sure how reasonable a merged single specification document would actually be. It probably only makes sense if it could be generated (semi-)automatically, allowing it to include updates from the individual modules that it incorporates.

If a full combined document isn’t reasonable, perhaps a single table of contents and index could be generated which covers all specifications incorporated into the snapshot? Doing this would go a long way for helping someone determine _which_ module they need to read when they’re looking up a specific CSS feature.

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Received on Monday, 3 November 2025 18:29:59 UTC