Disabling card generation in social plugin does not work

[boamaod]

Context

As described in documentation specifying cards: false in mkdocs.yml should "enable or disable social card generation".

Bug description

Specifying cards: false in mkdocs.yml the cards are still generated. Specifying enabled: false disables the whole social plugin, but this is a different option and doesn't satisfy the same needs as only disabling card generation.

Related links

• https://squidfunk.github.io/mkdocs-material/plugins/social/#config.cards
• https://squidfunk.github.io/mkdocs-material/plugins/social/#config.enabled

Reproduction

9.5.47-disabling-card-generation-in-social-plugin-does-not-work.zip

Steps to reproduce

1. Run mkdocs serve
2. Install required dependencies with pip install "mkdocs-material[imaging] as instructed in terminal
3. Run mkdocs serve again
4. See actual card generated at http://127.0.0.1:8000/assets/images/social/index.png
5. Also see the PNG file in .cache/plugin/social

Browser

No response

Before submitting

• I have read and followed the bug reporting guidelines.
• I have attached links to the documentation, and possibly related issues and discussions.
• I assure that I have removed all customizations before submitting this bug report.
• I have attached a .zip file with a minimal reproduction using the built-in info plugin.

[squidfunk]

Thanks for reporting! Fixed in a7dc57c.

[kamilkrzyskow]

Does the Social plugin do anything else apart of creating the cards? I think this option is also not used in the Insiders version at all.
Perhaps it should be soft-deprecated? 🤔

[squidfunk]

Not yet, but there are some things that might matter, e.g., allowing to set a custom image for all pages or specific pages only, not creating cards at all, but still adding the respective meta tags, etc. Currently both settings have the same functionality, but keeping a dedicated setting keeps it future-proof.

[squidfunk]

Released as part of 9.5.48.

[boamaod]

Thank you for the quick release, @squidfunk!

However, I'm not sure I understand this option, because I indeed expected it to be something like "not creating cards at all, but still adding the respective meta tags", but it appears that specifying cards: false by default also disables the meta tag generation for title, description etc. I expected "card generation" which you can disable/enable just to mean generating the images at cards_dir, but it seems I was mistaken.

[squidfunk]

Yes, that's correct. As said, currently, the social plugin only focuses on generating cards, so if no cards are generated, there are no meta tags to add. We might add an option in the future to add custom images, but that's currently not a priority.