Deprecate Composition Token Type

The Composition Token is a Token Type we initially introduced to support design decisions that are typically composed of multiple parts, like typography, shadows and borders.

Since then, a lot has changed.

The Design Tokens Community Group hosts a token specification on the W3C community group pages for web standards. Although it's in draft form, the tools and technologies working with Design Tokens are trying to align with the W3C DTCG specification.

The W3C DTCG specification defines each of these composite design decisions as their own Token Type instead of a generic composition Token Type.

→ See the W3C DTCG Spec 9.0 Composite types for more details

You might have noticed Tokens Studio is aligning to the W3C DTCG spec by introducing as many of the same Token Types as reasonable and feasible.

We now support typography, border, and boxShadow as independent Composite Token Types.

Migrate away from using the Composition Token Type in the plugin when possible
We encourage our community to migrate from using the 'legacy' composition Token Type to a corresponding official token type, as we may deprecate it in the future.

An engineer working on Style Dictionary has also formally requested we deprecate this Token Type due to its problematic nature in code. (Github 2800)

Could it be a feature in Tokens Studio instead of a Token Type?

We know some of you love the idea of Composition Tokens as a way to have a single token which captures the values of as many design decisions as possible applied to a component. In fact, many of you have requested features to push this idea even further.

The goal it is to work faster without having to apply so many Tokens manually.

While this doesn't align with the direction of the W3C DTCG spec for a Token Type, having a feature that would allow multiple Tokens to be applied in one click could be an interesting feature the Tokens Studio team could work on in the future.