Less CSS cleaner? - less

I now have 4000 lines of "less" -- it's primarily just CSS, with only a few newer bits taking advantage of Less' functionality.
I'd like to clean it up -- nest any rules that are nestable, for example. I've found css2less but my code is too big for it, and the command-line version actually generates invalid Less.
Are there any alternatives? Either less->less cleaner, or css->less converter/cleaner?

There are several CSS to LESS converters online, such as css2less.cc or lessify. They will convert your classic CSS to LESS syntax, which is what I understand you are trying to do.

Related

What's the difference between a boilerplate and scaffolding?

I personally would say that a boilerplate is like a single snippet that can be pasted. But there are repos like this one: https://github.com/h5bp/html5-boilerplate
So, what should be the difference? Google search doesn't really provide an useful answer. Since the actual dictionary definitions of these terms are completely different from their meaning in programing.
Boilerplate: repetitive stuff that is necesssary, yet you get to type it out again and again and again, and it just feels like it wastes time to have to do it so many times. Most frameworks try to reduce boilerplate as much as possible while still being flexible enough to cover all necessities.
Scaffolding: a starting point for your program (or part of it), generated by some tool. You take it and tweak it to your needs. This combats the boilerplate problem by automatically generating some of it so you don't need to type it by hand.
Boilerplate: static template or templates likes 'sample code'. Files for re-useing in project by copy-paste, and then modify it as the need.
Scaffolding: templates with some placehold (variable), used by some tool(like project widzard) to generate the start point of project. For example the npm init.

perl5 code with (ignored) perl6 data types

I want to start prepping some perl5 code for perl6. in particular, I like the idea of declaring what types my variables are supposed to be. perl6 defines Bool, Int, Array, Hash, Num, Complex, Pair, and Str. So I would in essence like to do the equivalent of a C preprocessor #define Int /**/ for now. It would be even better if it would check the data type, but I can live without it.
Easy? Hard? Impossible?
You would have to write a parser that can parse Perl 5. Unless your code is fairly simple, that's pretty high on the hardness scale.
Also, I found that I structure Perl 6 programs very much different from Perl 5 code. You can technically stay very close to 1:1 one a line by line basis when porting Perl 5 to Perl 6 but the result wont be idiomatic, slow and hard to maintain when you fully switch to Perl 6. Just adding empty macros will not help you much because every mistake you make is just ignored. That may actually increase the burden when you want to port the program for good.
The idea has appeal but you may just increase your workload for no real gain.
There are several Perl 5 modules that go into that direction. For object orientation you can use Moose and MooseX::Method::Signatures.
For declaring subs and methods there is Method::Signatures, Sub::Signatures and Kavorka.
Also look in the Perl6namespace on CPAN.

Portable Executable DLL file and binary date format

I have got a PE executable file *.exe (32-bit), which is an small application (2.6Mb) to update firmware software of TV device. However, the update mechanism was only available up to 2013-03-12. I want to hack this executable just for pleasure. I'm trying to find this expiration date in file hexdump using PE Explorer, and replace it by some date in future to make this program work.
I found this article about binary date format:
binary date format
I am trying to find something like this value:
2013-03-xx: 0x713xxxxx
Is this a good approach to solve my task? Any suggestions? Do you know any others tools for hexdump that may be useful?
Best regard,
WP
There are likely a lot of values of the form 0x713xxxxx -- 2.6 MB might be larger than you've thought when you start looking through it more or less at random (you don't actually know that the application uses this date format internally).
The conventional approach to deal with this sort of problem is to use a tool to step through the program, examining the code that is executing, until you find the point where the check occurs. Then simply disable the check so that it always fails -- by altering the date, or simply by altering the code.
A popular tool for stepping through code that you do not control is the Interactive Dissassembler, IDA. You can download a freeware version of it here: https://www.hex-rays.com/products/ida/support/download_freeware.shtml
It might be harder than you think to do what you want, but you'll almost certainly learn a lot by trying.
Be aware of the legal issues you may be getting yourself into by making modifications to someone else's binaries, particularly if you distribute them afterwards.
dumpbin is a good PE parser (but if I were you, I won't do such kind of time stamp hacks :))

Getting LLVM/Clang to be 16 bit aligned

I am working on a legacy project that has a large amount of files dating back to pre-OS X days. It's data has been 16 bit aligned for > 15 years. I would like to move to a full LLVM compilation but I can't seem to get 2 byte alignment working. Are there any compiler level options available for this? (previously using -malign-mac68k)
I am aware of the #pragma pack(2) option here. However that would require me to modify upwards of 1000 source files to include this. That it's a worst-case option, but it seems like a hack. Besides, if this is possible then surely there is a default option to set the alignment?
According to clang's sources, it does support mac68k alignment rules. It seems that right now you can enable it via "#pragma options align=mac68k" only. If you're ok with small clang hacking, then you can implement the cmdline option as well and submit the patch to clang.
I would suggest looking at #pragma pack (see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/2e70t5y1%28v=vs.80%29.aspx and http://gcc.gnu.org/onlinedocs/gcc/Structure_002dPacking-Pragmas.html). It's relatively easy to use, and should work with any compiler Apple ships.
i use the latest gcc/gortran on osx compiled by the guys at ibm, if you read the gcc manual there are at least 8 different alignment optimizations to consider not just the bulk malign
Because system-level headers assume default alignment (they don't have directives to override alignment in most cases), changing the alignment for everything will break OS calls. As such, you don't want to be doing this.
Just write a script to apply your #pragma pack(2) to the source files in question, avoiding #includes. It's relatively easy and unlikely to cause unfortunate side-effects.

Is dotless the same exact syntax as the less css language?

The .less library calls itself a port of ruby LESS library. Can I take away from that that they both are compilers for the same LESS file format or do they expect subtly different less code? Asked another way, am I locking myself in to the dotless library or can use dotless and the less javascript lib on the less files?
Dotlesscss is a straight (almost 1:1 port) of the JavaScript project less.js (a JavaScript implementation of LessCSS by Cloudhead the original author of LessCss for Ruby)
In 99% of the cases the same code that runs on dotlesscss will run on less.js and vice versa. If something works on less.js and doesn't on dotlesscss we consider that a bug and try to fix it if possible.
There are very subtle differences though as it is very hard to keep three different projects 100% synced up.
For one that would be different function names.
Examples would be the color manipulation functions that we implemented before the LessCss project, as we named these after their SASS equivalents..
But in general: the language though is 100% compatible.
You are not limiting yourself to one language. You should be able to move between different implementations fairly easily.
Also dotless runs on Mono so you are not locked to a specific OS either.
If you encounter any problems feel free to raise an Issue on our GitHub Page or through the Mailing List
They're supposed to be equivalent implemnentations however there is a hudge difference between
the server side implementations (ruby, .net, php ...)
the client side javascript implementation
The big difference is that with the client side implementation, you'll be able to use all the dom of the browser in your less files and this would never work with server side implementations :
#height: `document.body.clientHeight`;
More over, in the current version of dotless (1.2.4.0), javascript evaluation is not implemented and is rendered as [script unsupported] in the css output.