zensical/python/tests/fixtures/social

Social plugin compatibility matrix

These projects compare the user-visible output of Material for MkDocs and Zensical with the same mkdocs.yml and source files. Run the matrix from the repository root:

/Users/squidfunk/.workspace/squidfunk/repos/mkdocs-material/community/venv/bin/python \
  scripts/social_compatibility.py \
  --mkdocs /Users/squidfunk/.workspace/squidfunk/repos/mkdocs-material/community/venv/bin/mkdocs \
  --zensical .venv/bin/zensical

Case	Behavior
basic	Custom layout, root and nested card routes, page title and metadata
filters	Include precedence, exclude patterns, page-level opt-out
metadata	Meta plugin inheritance and page-level layout options
multiple	Ordered plugin instances, separate card directories and metadata
no-site-url	Cards generated without public image metadata
image-only	Bundled image-only layout and a local SVG dependency
bundled	Default, accent, invert and variant layouts with typography
logo-icon	Explicit theme logo icon and omitted font settings
debug	Build-time debug grid and color settings
blog	Cards for generated blog views and posts
disabled	Disabled plugin stays disabled despite a page opt-in
cards-off	Global card switch with a page-level opt-in
paths	Flat URLs, alternate card directory and custom layout directory
layout-options	Bundled-layout image, logo, title, description and page overrides
layer-composition	YAML definitions, SVG background, icon, origins and offsets
theme-defaults	Palette list, SVG/PNG logos, exact font face and variant fallback
custom-typography	Custom alignment, wrapping, shrinking and line spacing
template-context	Page file and URL values inside custom tag templates
lifecycle	Cached rebuilds after image, page metadata and layout edits
recoverable-error	Missing image with ignored card-generation error
deprecated	Deprecated cards_color and cards_font settings
debug-no-grid	Debug overlay without a grid

The check compares generated card paths, dimensions and every card's mean RGB pixel difference, plus each page's social metadata. A case passes when the metadata and dimensions match and every card's mean RGB difference is at most 1 on a 0–255 scale. The lifecycle case also rebuilds both engines after each exact source edit and checks that the expected output changed. PNG file bytes may differ between image libraries even when the visible output is the same. Build logs and full output are kept in a temporary directory only while the command runs; pass --output PATH to keep them for inspection.

The cases using typography or debug labels download Roboto from Google Fonts on their first build. Use --font-cache PATH to seed both temporary projects from an existing Material font cache and run without a network connection.

On 2026-09-23, 19 of 22 cases passed the strict pixel threshold using Material for MkDocs 9.7.1 with Pillow 12.1.1 and this Zensical branch. One remaining case is an accepted rasterization difference; the other two are behavior gaps:

• custom-typography: text placement matches visually. Different text rasterizers exceed the strict pixel threshold (maximum mean RGB difference 3.636), but this is not considered a user-visible defect.
• template-context: Material exposes page.file.src_uri to layout templates; the Zensical build fails because that value is undefined.
• lifecycle: after a cached SVG background edit, Material retains its old card while Zensical updates it. The initial build and later layout edit match.

The full matrix currently exits nonzero because of the strict pixel threshold and the two behavior gaps. It does not prove every custom layout, live serve edit, remote font, or error policy combination. Configuration keys are represented across this matrix and the Python integration tests, but a finite set of cases cannot prove universal behavioral parity.