LESS CSS Support

[ghost]

IMO, MyBB should implement LESS support into the theme editor, even if it's like the code that @euantor posted on the forums where it gets transformed into pure CSS on commit.

Should be beneficial to theme authors, especially if it is transformed into CSS - that makes it easier for the end user to understand, instead of staring at a foreign syntax. Of course, if the user doesn't know what LESS is, they can simply use CSS.

Of course, one problem I encountered (and haven't fixed yet) is that variables don't get carried over sessions, so saving and reopening the stylesheet will cause variables to be parsed and lost.

What do you think? I tested it, adding in support on Stylesheet Creation and Editing only took about six lines of code, plus an extra file (the lessc.inc.php Euan posted).

[amwelles]

I'm partial to SASS, but that's just me.

[nmalcolm]

Due to the amount of different CSS extensions and the fact we're currently not using any (and might not in the future; I don't think we've ever discussed such as thing for 2.0), I don't feel we should include something like this in 1.8. It's a step forward and a step back. It probably would be useful to some people but supporting it could become problematic especially as MyBB has been pretty self contained. Introducing large features based on external projects with lack of knowledge of how they work generally is a bad idea.

[euantorano]

Definitely agreed @nmalcolm. It's a bit too big of a step to make in the core in 1.8. We could, however possibly look at adding the required hook(s) to achieve support via a plugin for preprocessors such as LESS, SASS etc. Thoughts on that option?