                                                        -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
TABLE OF CONTENTS
=================

1. Introduction
2. Copyright and License
3. System Requirements
4. Installation
5. Documentation
6. Bugs
7. Author Information


INTRODUCTION
============

RCSSmin is a CSS minifier.

The minifier is based on the semantics of the `YUI compressor`_\, which itself
is based on `the rule list by Isaac Schlueter`_\.

This module is a re-implementation aiming for speed instead of maximum
compression, so it can be used at runtime (rather than during a preprocessing
step). RCSSmin does syntactical compression only (removing spaces, comments
and possibly semicolons). It does not provide semantic compression (like
removing empty blocks, collapsing redundant properties etc). It does, however,
support various CSS hacks (by keeping them working as intended).

Here's a feature list:

- Strings are kept, except that escaped newlines are stripped
- Space/Comments before the very end or before various characters are
  stripped: ``:{});=>+],!`` (The colon (``:``) is a special case, a single
  space is kept if it's outside a ruleset.)
- Space/Comments at the very beginning or after various characters are
  stripped: ``{}(=:>+[,!``
- Optional space after unicode escapes is kept, resp. replaced by a simple
  space
- whitespaces inside ``url()`` definitions are stripped
- Comments starting with an exclamation mark (``!``) can be kept optionally.
- All other comments and/or whitespace characters are replaced by a single
  space.
- Multiple consecutive semicolons are reduced to one
- The last semicolon within a ruleset is stripped
- CSS Hacks supported:

  - IE7 hack (``>/**/``)
  - Mac-IE5 hack (``/*\*/.../**/``)
  - The boxmodelhack is supported naturally because it relies on valid CSS2
    strings
  - Between ``:first-line`` and the following comma or curly brace a space is
    inserted. (apparently it's needed for IE6)
  - Same for ``:first-letter``

rcssmin.c is a reimplementation of rcssmin.py in C and improves runtime up to
factor 50 or so (depending on the input).

.. _YUI compressor: https://github.com/yui/yuicompressor/

.. _the rule list by Isaac Schlueter: https://github.com/isaacs/cssmin/tree/


COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
=====================

Copyright 2011, 2012
André Malo or his licensors, as applicable.

The whole package is distributed under the Apache License Version 2.0.
You'll find a copy in the root directory of the distribution or online at:
<http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0>.


SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
===================

Both python 2 (>=2.4) and python 3 are supported.


INSTALLATION
============

rcssmin is set up using the standard python distutils. So you can install
it using the usual command:

$ python setup.py install

The command above will install rcssmin into python's library path.

Additionally it will install the documentation. On unices it will be
installed by default into <prefix>/share/doc/rcssmin.

For customization options please study the output of

$ python setup.py --help

Espescially the following options may be interesting for you:

  --without-c-extensions  Don't install C extensions
  --without-docs          Do not install documentation files

Alternatively just copy rcssmin.py into your project and use it.


DOCUMENTATION
=============

A generated API documentation is available in the docs/apidoc/ directory.
But you can just look into the module. It provides a simple function,
called cssmin which takes the script as a string and returns the minified
script as a string.

The module additionally provides a "streamy" interface:

$ python -mrcssmin <css >minified

It takes two options:

  -b  Keep bang-comments (Comments starting with an exclamation mark)
  -p  Use the python implementation (not the C implementation)

The latest documentation is also available online at
<http://opensource.perlig.de/rcssmin/>.


BUGS
====

No bugs, of course. ;-)
But if you've found one or have an idea how to improve rcssmin,
please send a mail to <rcssmin-bugs@perlig.de>.


AUTHOR INFORMATION
==================

André "nd" Malo <nd@perlig.de>
GPG: 0x8103A37E


If God intended people to be naked, they would be born that way.
                                                 -- Oscar Wilde
