Everything in that article is why I don't like asciidoc. I think a lot of documentation should be absolute dead simple - no macros and complex behavior. It should just work. Markdown is great for that.
I wish Asciidoc was more popular
21–30 of 124 posts
Re: I wish Asciidoc was more popular
#22Main killer for me - admittedly because I like sharp tools, and it used to claim to be 'lightweight': 'apt install asciidoc' (and I had to delete most of it, because - for the first time ever - I got an HN message about "comment too long"):- Reading package lists... Building dependency tree... Reading state information... The following additional packages will be installed: asciidoc-base asciidoc-common asciidoc-dbla…
Not on my machine:
# apt install asciidoc
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
The following additional packages will be installed:
asciidoc-base asciidoc-common docbook-xsl xsltproc
Suggested packages:
asciidoc-doc docbook-utils source-highlight dbtoepub docbook-xsl-doc-html | docbook-xsl-doc-pdf | docbook-xsl-doc-text | docbook-xsl-doc docbook-xsl-saxon fop libsaxon-java libxalan2-java libxslthl-java xalan
Recommended packages:
asciidoc-dblatex xmlto
The following NEW packages will be installed:
asciidoc asciidoc-base asciidoc-common docbook-xsl xsltproc
Re: I wish Asciidoc was more popular
#23Very briefly on admonitions: there is nothing stopping you from adding them to markdown yourself: You _really_ shouldn’t play with matches, Debbie. Later on in that document: warning { display: block; color: red; } Which is a very long winded way of saying that you can use markdown for authoring actual content, and then use good old HTML for styling whatever else you want to. Relying on asciidoc for styling elements…
There's also a generic directive proposal[1] that enables admonitions, YouTube embeds, etc. With remark[2] plugins, markdown can be as extensible as you may need. Here's a sample plugin for admonitions[3] by yours truly.
[1]. https://talk.commonmark.org/t/generic-directives-plugins-syn...
[2]. https://github.com/remarkjs/remark
[3]. https://github.com/Microflash/remark-callout-directives
Re: I wish Asciidoc was more popular
#24Main killer for me - admittedly because I like sharp tools, and it used to claim to be 'lightweight': 'apt install asciidoc' (and I had to delete most of it, because - for the first time ever - I got an HN message about "comment too long"):- Reading package lists... Building dependency tree... Reading state information... The following additional packages will be installed: asciidoc-base asciidoc-common asciidoc-dbla…
Not on my machine: # apt install asciidoc Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree... Done Reading state information... Done The following additional packages will be installed: asciidoc-base asciidoc-common docbook-xsl xsltproc Suggested packages: asciidoc-doc docbook-utils source-highlight dbtoepub docbook-xsl-doc-html | docbook-xsl-doc-pdf | docbook-xsl-doc-text | docbook-xsl-doc docbook-xsl-saxon fo…
You probably have X and Wayland installed (quite why those are required for asciidoc is a question I'll leave for others).
Re: I wish Asciidoc was more popular
#25I tried installing it years ago (in a GNU/Linux distro, using its packages); it needed so many dependencies (like hundreds of megs), and in the end didn't work.
Total bait and switch in terms of the simplicity "sales pitch".
My expectation was that there would be some kind of script (just one, possibly all in one file) which scans the simple input syntax and outputs it into several markup formats based on some command line option.
Re: I wish Asciidoc was more popular
#26Main killer for me - admittedly because I like sharp tools, and it used to claim to be 'lightweight': 'apt install asciidoc' (and I had to delete most of it, because - for the first time ever - I got an HN message about "comment too long"):- Reading package lists... Building dependency tree... Reading state information... The following additional packages will be installed: asciidoc-base asciidoc-common asciidoc-dbla…
Probably because asciidoc recommends asciidoc-dblatex (used for producing LaTeX via docbook). Try 'apt install asciidoc asciidoc-dblatex-' to install just asciidoc without pulling in the other package.
Re: I wish Asciidoc was more popular
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't use emacs, so an emacs mode isn't that useful for me.
Org is also just a file format with extensions available in VS Code, vim, sublime, and Atom. I've personally used the VS Code extension, I think it works just as well as the Markdown extension. [1]. https://orgmode.org/install.html
It's not just a doc format though, it's also a task manager format, a literate programming format, an everything format with no clear separation.
I can't help but feel like it would be a lot more widely accepted if they divided it in multiple projects each with their own goals and requirements.
Re: I wish Asciidoc was more popular
#28Aside from the merits of Markdown and Asciidoc, Asciidoc has a name that doesn't help. Depending on the (natural) language, ASCII (the encoding, that is) annoys anything from a small percentage of users (e.g., English, Esperanto), to many people (e.g, Dutch, German, French), to almost everyone (anything that doesn't use Latin characters). In the context of a markup language intended for structuring normal text its name just screams obsolescence for a lot of potential users!
Re: I wish Asciidoc was more popular
#29Everything in that article is why I don't like asciidoc. I think a lot of documentation should be absolute dead simple - no macros and complex behavior. It should just work. Markdown is great for that.
Not having includes in markdown is a real bummer, though.
Re: I wish Asciidoc was more popular
#30Main killer for me - admittedly because I like sharp tools, and it used to claim to be 'lightweight': 'apt install asciidoc' (and I had to delete most of it, because - for the first time ever - I got an HN message about "comment too long"):- Reading package lists... Building dependency tree... Reading state information... The following additional packages will be installed: asciidoc-base asciidoc-common asciidoc-dbla…
Probably because asciidoc recommends asciidoc-dblatex (used for producing LaTeX via docbook). Try 'apt install asciidoc asciidoc-dblatex-' to install just asciidoc without pulling in the other package.
Thanks, hopefully this'll turn up on a google search for someone who just wants to turn simple text markup into a PDF ('apt' didn't offer the option of not installing asciidoc-dblatex).