add minify feature in output class?

Actually, we tried that and it proved to be a bad idea.

i tried some of those libraries and have a feeling i know what you really mean

but maybe we could have a standard minify function - well documented too - and then users should make sure their code complies with the "restrictions" to make it work, else they could end up in trouble? just a thought.

No, you don't really know what I meant - there literally was a 'minify_output' feature in CI 3.0-dev, for almost 3 years. And as I said, it proved itself to be a bad idea - it's not as easy as saying that we just need better regular expressions.
In fact, trying to do it via regular expressions (because that's the easiest looking method) is what makes it a deceptively hard task. It's not a silver bullet.

I was quite verbose with the commit message when the feature was removed: https://github.com/bcit-ci/CodeIgniter/c...14c6d7cbc8

... and that's final.