I'm chiming in just to let you know that I'm listening. There's still much to learn, especially from authors. I listen and learn as much as I talk about AsciiDoc :)
AsciiDoc continues to see great adoption (especially lately) because it has a great & noble goal: to make documentation (particularly formal documentation) more approachable and more efficient to write. My focus in the last few years has been to accelerate this impact. I've heard from many writers, especially information architects and companies maintaining large documentation projects, that AsciiDoc is good, but it can be better. We are experimenting with the AsciiDoc syntax to make it more approachable and more efficient to write. Software and documentation cannot stand still (because the world doesn't stand still). We are doing everything we can to maintain the spirit of AsciiDoc in Asciidoctor while accommodating the needs of a changing world and integrating new ideas. It's a careful balance we have to maintain & respect...though not always easy. The request I've heard more than any other is to create a standard for AsciiDoc. Time permitting, I have plans to initiate the standardization process and contribute to it in whatever way I can (it's hard to know what the future holds). The working title for the standard is "UniDoc", short for a "universal documentation (shorthand) language" and to shake the misconception that AsciiDoc doesn't handle Unicode. We may throw that title away, but it's a useful code name for referring to the standard now. I'll be sure to post any progress on this initiative here so everyone knows what's going on. Right now, the ETA is ETA :) Lex wrote: > The tools asciidoc and asciidoctor are just that, tools. Don't > confuse them with the markup syntax. Yes and no. Asciidoctor is introducing new syntax because, as I mentioned, the world has new needs and AsciiDoc must evolve. However, I do believe that this syntax can either be made to be part of the AsciiDoc / UniDoc standard or described via an extension (traditionally called an AsciiDoc filter), so that we never break away from the composition of the AsciiDoc syntax. The purpose of the standard is to provide the roots of the language that allow any number of implementations, interpretations and extensions...but always reusable content separate from presentation! (We also need to have a formal grammar because that is a huge barrier to new implementations. We will have a formal grammar. Documentation is too important to be based on a language with no formal grammar). Stéphane Gourichon wrote: > Now I have chosen to stay with asciidoc but the reason is not obvious. > Asciidoc has drawbacks but asciidoctor feels to walk a wrong way. I'm curious what path you think we are taking that we shouldn't. We certainly want to be on the right path. I want to emphasize that, although we are exploring direct AsciiDoc to output formats, we are definitely not abandoning DocBook (in fact, we now produce DocBook 5, something AsciiDoc Python still lacks!). I wholeheartedly agree that DocBook is a great document interchange format. I just don't think any human should be touching it (at least, not as part of content authoring). (I also think that the *way* DocBook is processed is completely insane. I am not a believer in XSL. I've been down that road. I think it's a terrible waste of engineering resources. However, my opinion really doesn't matter on the subject. If it works for you, then by all means, I encourage you to use what works for you. That's the great thing about separating content from presentation. You are free to follow your own path when converting). Gour wrote: > In the past I used LyX/LaTeX for quality typesetting, but now I believe > I could simply use Asciidoc --> PDF when then desired quality does not > have to be top-notch and use your toolchain when I want to do fine > tuning of latex file. Another option here is just print to PDF in the browser (e.g., Chrome or Firefox). The default Asciidoctor stylesheet includes CSS that makes the printed document look very professional. (Note that the default Asciidoctor stylesheet can be used with AsciiDoc Python as well). Many companies, including Red Hat, are abandoning the DocBook toolchain in favor of "printing" the document PDF using WebKit (via wkhtmltopdf or phantomjs). It's worth considering, especially for quick stuff. If you have any questions about the direction we're headed with Asciidoctor, feel free to ask. I'm always listening! Cheers, -Dan -- Dan Allen | http://google.com/profiles/dan.j.allen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "asciidoc" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/asciidoc. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
