TR CSS versioning into the document?

[iherman]

With the upcoming change of the /TR CSS files and resulting changes in respec (e.g., using nav for the TOC) I wonder whether adding a 'css-version' flag to the config part automatically would make sense. Post-processing HTML files generated via respec (eg, generating an epub) will have to rely on that version for some details; at the moment, the only way to do that seems to be by analysing the css reference's URI to see if there is, eg, a year in it. Can be done by inelegant. (And there may be a need to convert files that were published, say, in 2015, ie, whose CSS version is different than what will come in a few weeks...)

[marcoscaceres]

We support this via experimental styles, but it's not something we really want to expose.

[iherman]

@marcoscaceres , I am not sure I understand the answer. What does experimental style mean in practice?

[marcoscaceres]

Sorry, I was not very clear. We support an internal property that one can set on ReSpec's configuration - for example:

conf.useExperimentalStyles = "2016"; //or true, which just uses the current year

That then simply changes {version} in the following URL:
"https://www.w3.org/StyleSheets/TR/{version}"

Which then becomes the default style URL that is used. Right now, it defaults to 2016.

[iherman]

If I understand you well, this means that the version of the CSS will be reflected in the URI it uses, insofar as in /TR/{version} the {version} string actually stands for a year. If that is a principle we can use for later years as well, then that also works (actually, this is exactly what I implement right now:-). So I am fine...