Scut

— a collection of Sass utilities to ease and improve our implementations of common style-code patterns.

For a prolonged introduction to Scut, read "Introducing Scut" on CSS-Tricks.

If you have any questions about Sass, they are answered in Sass's fine documentation.

Installing and Using

Please visit the complete documentation here:
http://davidtheclark.github.io/scut/

Usage should be explained there, as is installation. But I'll explain installation here, too, for your convenience. You can install Scut by:

• Using Bower: bower install scut --save-dev.
• Downloading the file from the latest release.
• Using Scut as a Compass extension by installing the RubyGem (gem install scut) and then performing the usual Compass require and @import business.

Contributing

Please do! Scut is simple; contributing should be easy. So give it a go.

If you have any questions, if anything about this document is unclear or inaccurate, if you can't figure out what to do, please file an issue or contact me.

Approach

Scut utilities should help users avoid repetition, organize code, and re-use code.

Scut utilities should tackle patterns that suffer from one or more of the following problems:

1. The pattern is non-intuitive.
2. The pattern deserves a shorthand.
3. The pattern involves some important best practices.
4. The pattern is extremely common and (at least) a little annoying.

The utility's goal is to fix those problems in a way that maximizies reusability. Here are some principles to keep in mind to maximize that reusability:

• Include sufficient detail to implement the pattern, but no more.
• Use arguments to allow for typical variations on the theme.
• Arrange those arguments according to the likelihood that users will want to change them.
• Namespace (notice the scut- prefix everwhere).
• Document thoroughly.

I go into detail about all these ideas in that CSS-Tricks article.

Development Requirements

• Node and npm
• Grunt-cli
• Bower
• Sass-cli

Writing Scut Utilities

The utilities are in src/, organized by category. The SCSS stylesheets in src/ ultimately concatenate into dist/_scut.scss, which is what users @import into their own Sass.

Scut's SCSS Styleguide

Please have a look at existing SCSS files within src/ and try to match their style.

(Or, if you think there's a better way to do things, please file an issue.)

Here are some guidelines to explain how I've been writing:

• Head the file with a multi-line comment (each line an inline // comment, not a block comment) naming the utility and listing any dependencies. Limit dependencies please. In the end, that top comment should also contain the URL of the utility's documentation. For example:

// SCUT PIXELS TO EMS
// http://davidtheclark.github.io/scut/#pixels-to-ems

// Depends on `scut-strip-unit`.

• Indent with two spaces.
• List arguments on separate lines, so they are easy to scan. For example:

@mixin scut-color-swap (
  $inactive,
  $active,
  $duration: 0,
  $bg: false
) {
  // mixin content
}

• Space liberally. A space at the beginning and end of mixins and functions helps distinguish the arguments from the inner workings. Spacing can also help delineate different "sections" of the code by grouping rules that work together and separating those with different roles.

Experimenting and Testing

The method I recommend for experimentation and testing is to use Codepen, either starting your own pen from scratch or forking the Scut Playground (which imports the latest version of Scut).

(I have deleted the "tests" directory and tasks from the repository in favor of relying on Codepen.)

Documenting

Documentation is compiled using Assemble. The files are located in docs/dev, with all Assemble-related files (content, helpers, Handlebars templates) in docs/dev/assemble — compiling to docs/dev/index.html — and all other site assets (style, js, images, etc.) in docs/dev/assets. Here's how you can do it:

• npm install to ensure you have all the node modules you need. The command will also run bower install, to install the bower components you need; and grunt init, to build the existing site so you can view it locally.
• Running grunt dev (which in turn runs both grunt watch and grunt connect) will make the documentation page available at localhost:9000/docs/dev. While running grunt dev, the page will LiveReload when you save changes if you have the LiveReload Chrome extension.
• The bulk of the writing is done in docs/dev/assemble/data.yml. And the example styling is done in the SCSS stylesheets in docs/dev/assets/scss/examples/.

At the top of docs/dev/assemble/data.yml is a short guide to writing the YAML that translates into a utility's entry in the documentation. (What's YAML? If you skim this you'll understand.)

For the SCSS of your example, please follow the conventions established in the other examples (found in docs/dev/assets/scss/examples/). A couple of points:

• Please stick with the color variables $eg-muted, $eg-light, and $eg-dark, so everything matches.
• If there are rules that you would like to add (in order to make the example look nice) but you don't need to display them (because they have nothing to do with usage of the utility), wrap them in the comments /* hidden rules */ and /* end hidden rules */, followed by a blank line. Look at the existing example stylesheets and you'll get it.
• Do not use @extends in the examples, but mention them within comments (as in existing examples). The method with which I'm showing compiled CSS in the docs precludes the use of @extends. So just @include the mixin and comment about the @extend option.

A few Grunt tasks will create the test page if you're running grunt watch. (If you weren't running grunt watch when you saved your changes, you can manually run grunt docsDev for the same result.) Look at Gruntfile.coffee for details.