Requesting feedback on CSS3 parser and tokenizer

[Sage Gerard]

I'm working to release a CSS3 tokenizer and parser to the catalog tomorrow.

https://github.com/zyrolasting/css3-syntax

The current state lacks tests, so any logic errors should keep me busy for a little longer. I'm here to ask for bug reports and feedback in the issue tracker since I had my head in the weeds long enough.

[Alex Harsanyi]

I now very little about web technologies and web development, so this might be a stupid question:  could you explain what types of applications might need a to parse CSS files?  I can only think of one, and that is a web browser.  Are you working towards a web browser in Racket?

Alex.

[Hendrik Boom]

On Tue, May 12, 2020 at 05:35:59PM -0700, Alex Harsanyi wrote:
> I now very little about web technologies and web development, so this might
> be a stupid question: could you explain what types of applications might
> need a to parse CSS files? I can only think of one, and that is a web
> browser. Are you working towards a web browser in Racket?

I think CSS can also be used in .odt format files. Not sure, though.
Don't have my .odt manual at hand.
And in .epub files.

-- hendrik

>
> Alex.
>
> On Wednesday, May 13, 2020 at 6:37:22 AM UTC+8, Sage Gerard wrote:
> >
> > I'm working to release a CSS3 tokenizer and parser to the catalog
> > tomorrow.
> >
> > https://github.com/zyrolasting/css3-syntax
> >
> > The current state lacks tests, so any logic errors should keep me busy for
> > a little longer. I'm here to ask for bug reports and feedback in the issue
> > tracker since I had my head in the weeds long enough.
>

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Racket Users" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to racket-users...@googlegroups.com.
> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/racket-users/268eace0-f69e-44d4-b59c-13ef767d1108%40googlegroups.com.

[Sage Gerard]

> I now very little about web technologies and web development, so this might
> be a stupid question: could you explain what types of applications might
> need a to parse CSS files?

Linters and minifiers.

Linters are proofreaders for your code. They need to parse code to alert users to things like two items not being alphabetized, or inconsistent indentation. A good linter for CSS in particular is https://stylelint.io

Minifiers rewrite code to use the fewest possible characters. Good CSS minifiers need a parser to find repetition in some styles, and reorganize them accordingly.

> Are you working towards a web browser in Racket?

Gosh, no. A bare-bones browser is a summer project if you rush. A GOOD browser is a monstrous piece of software and I couldn't dream of implementing one without a dedicated team.

My needs are a little different. Right now if I move my website's files around, all of my files "follow" each other by updating their own relative paths. The part that does that for my CSS is precariously balanced on regular expressions. Having a CSS parser helps me do that better, and it gives me more processing options as a bonus. So if I later want to implement a minifier or a small linter, I can do so.


~slg

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/racket-users/20200513033923.h4tbljscffhi3v66%40topoi.pooq.com.