Stylish

Stylish is a tool for writing CSS with Ruby.

Creating stylesheets

style = Stylish.generate do
  rule ".header", :background => {:color => "teal", :image => "header.png"}
  rule ".content" do
    h2 :font_size => "2em"
    p :margin => "0 0 1em 0"
  end
end

Calling the stylesheet's to_s method would produce the following CSS code.

.header {background-color:teal; background-image:url('header.png');}
.content h2 {font-size:2em;}
.content p {margin:0 0 1em 0;}

A number of additional examples are available in the example/ directory.

Compatibility

Stylish is compatible with Ruby 1.9. To expand on this slightly, the Stylish test suite passes under Ruby 1.9; the usual caveats about this apply.

Future considerations

  • Add a Border class to complement Background.
  • Add better support for CSS3 properties to Background.
  • Fundamental objects like percentages need their own classes rather than being dealt with in an ad-hoc manner by higher-level objects.
  • Add a parser so CSS can be read as well as written.

Design notes

CSS is a remarkably succinct and powerful language, with several marked deficiencies. It lacks both variables and iteration, and its long-winded property names are often irritating. Stylish attempts to address these issues by reducing duplication, providing a cleaner namespacing syntax and reducing transcription errors. It is not intended as a replacement for hand-authored CSS, but as a supplement to it.

Stylish treats CSS as object code--but it treats it nicely.

Licence

Copyright (c) 2008-2009, Benedict Eastaugh

All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

  • Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
  • Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
  • The name of the author may not be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.