Re: [Edbrowse-dev] css parser

[Adam Thompson <arthompson1990@gmail.com>]

On Tue, Feb 13, 2018 at 01:41:31PM -0500, Karl Dahlke wrote:
> Earlier posts have discussed the possibility, and the advantages, of writing our own css parser and querySelectorAll.
> If we are content with handling the high runner cases, and maybe not every corner case, it might not be as hard as first appears.
> (We don't handle the unusual cases now anyways.)

Indeed and we've got to do something.  We need some of css but the third-party software just doesn't appear to be good enough... that's a shame.
> css selector syntax is described here.
> 
> https://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/selector.html#grouping
> 
> There's a lot going on, but it's straightforward.
> An ideal css compiler would produce a 4 dimensional structure.
> I have implemented such, and it seems to work on the modest files I've tried.
> (I have yet to try the monster css file from stackoverflow.)
> Have a look at the comments in startwindow.js line 2105.
> If you want to play with it, browse any file with at least one css file,
> and in jdb,
> 
> v = mw0.cssPieces(mw0.uncomment(document.links[0].data));
> 
> Once this is shaken out, cssGather would call this instead of the third party css parser.
> Then we would write our own querySelectorAll, then invoke that from within cssApply.
> That's the roadmap.

Sounds good, I'll have a play with it and see what I can find.
Hopefully it all works as expected.

Thanks for working on this,
Adam.