Component Specification Goals

[joshblack]

As more implementations of the Carbon Design System become a part of the ecosystem, we'd love to start documenting components in a way that:

• The appearance and behavior of a component is clearly articulated
• The appearance and behavior of a component can be automatically tested

To accomplish this, we want to create a Design System specification. This specification includes the following areas in terms of development:

• The creation and maintenance of a living specification documentation
  • An implementor should be able to refer to this document to understand what behavior they need to implement
• The ability to use rules from the specification and represent them in code
• The ability to run rules against a given component implementation
• The ability to report results for a component implementation in a way that can be shared

While not an explicit design goal, eventually this work may need to be flexible enough to support a specification at the add-on level, as well.

[joshblack]

cc @mattrosno @shinytoyrobots does this match what you've been thinking about for the spec?

[mattrosno]

The creation and maintenance of a living specification documentation

May be good to add sub-bullet:

A designer should be able to refer to this document to understand how components should behave so the correct components are used for optimal user experience

Also:

The ability to update component styling class names with fewer migration breaking changes