@webref/css not providing same info as mdn-data

[nzakas]

We were looking at using mdn-data as a way to create a list of valid functions in CSS:
eslint/css#74

It says that the package is deprecated and to use @webref/css, however, that data is unsorted. The mdn-data package sorts the information into groups like functions, units, types, etc., that make it easy for tooling to use that data. The @webref/css doesn't have a structure that lends itself to easily finding categories of syntax.

What's the recommendation if we need categorized data?

[Josh-Cena]

Ping @mdn/core-yari-content

AFAIK, the at-rules and properties tables in mdn-data are still used and won't be gone any time soon due to the same reason you found, so I think it's safe to use it in the short term. In the long term you may want to find a way to figure out such syntax categorization yourself via its formal definition, or to persuade webref to add that as a field.

[nzakas]

It doesn't look like your at-mention worked, fyi.

I'd think if we're being recommended to use another package that that package would already have the data in a similar format?

[Josh-Cena]

The team is internal. The ping is visible on my side.

mdn-data was more or less created for MDN's own consumption. If we are stopping using it, we won't be committed to maintaining it. webref is the alternative that we are migrating to, so we are recommending it for other users as well. That doesn't promise 1-1 parity, just enough overlap such that we found it sufficient for our use case. As I said, mdn-data is still being maintained and updated because we are not fully off it yet and it's hard to do so in the very short term, but if you have features you need that's not in webref, that sounds more like a feature request for webref.