[community-group] Clarify if manually typing and reading token files is a primary concern (#149)

romainmenke has just created a new issue for https://github.com/design-tokens/community-group:

== Clarify if manually typing and reading token files is a primary concern ==
From the introduction

> While many tools now offer APIs to access design tokens or the ability to export design tokens as a file, these are all tool-specific. The burden is therefore on design system teams to create and maintain their own, bespoke "glue" code or workflows. Furthermore, if teams want to migrate to different tools, they will need to update those integrations.
>
>This specification aims to facilitate better interoperability between tools and thus lower the work design system teams need to do to integrate them by defining a standard file format for expressing design token data.

This I interpret to mean that the design token file format is intended to be written and read by software, not by people.

However in issues there is often feedback given that certain choices were made to facilitate writing token files manually.

--------

I would personally prefer a format that is more difficult to read and write by hand but is simple to consume and produce in code.

A simpler and more straight forward format will lead to tools with fewer bugs.
Fewer bugs in tools will lead to better interop between tools.
This again will drive adoption of the format....

--------

None of this is made impossible with a format that is easy to read and write by hand but it is often a conflicting concern and focus.

Please view or discuss this issue at https://github.com/design-tokens/community-group/issues/149 using your GitHub account


-- 
Sent via github-notify-ml as configured in https://github.com/w3c/github-notify-ml-config

Received on Sunday, 26 June 2022 21:12:38 UTC