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I wish Asciidoc was more popular

pdx.su

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Re: I wish Asciidoc was more popular

#51
post #49
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How does that command work?

It lets you do the equivalent of "apt install asciidoc; apt remove asciidoc-dblatex" in one command, so avoids downloading the unwanted packages only to remove them.

"The requested action can be overridden for specific packages by appending a plus (+) to the package name to install this package or a minus (-) to remove it"

https://manpages.debian.org/bullseye/apt/apt.8.en.html

Re: I wish Asciidoc was more popular

#53
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of dependecies are pulled from the (recommended) asciidoc-dblatex package, which depends, indirectly, on x11 packages. Don't install the recommended packages (whose concept is anyway in conflict with keeping a system lean) and see what happens.

How to not install recommended packages? (there wasn't a choice, and anyway not installing recommended packages often implies - rightly or wrongly - security risks).

Regarding the apt "recommended" concept, it's a generic concept of optional functionality; it's orthogonal to security. If one wants to make a generic association with security, less recommended packages -> less functionality -> smaller attack surface.

Re: I wish Asciidoc was more popular

#54
post #17

Main 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…

[deleted]

Re: I wish Asciidoc was more popular

#56

Very 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…

That assumes you are writing only HTML.

With Asciidoctor, we produce decent-looking PDF documentation as well as HTML.

Re: I wish Asciidoc was more popular

#58

Aside 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 na…

Absolutely, or at least I was also put off the name when I first heard of it. The name sounds like something that requires you to use (HTML) entities or some kind of Unicode code point syntax if you want to input non-ASCII. Blegh…

Re: I wish Asciidoc was more popular

#59
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure about the current state, but the Python2 implementation was the original one, and the Ruby one came later. So this statement: > First off, it's a single implementation. Is a bit misleading. It's more like there are no several flavors, like with markdown.

In fact, both claims are misleading. There are two implementations, and they implement distinct flavors with syntactic differences: https://consolelog.gitee.io/docs-asciidoctor/asciidoc-asciid... Markdown has a smaller flavors/implementations ratio!

In fact, also this claim is wrong, because there are three :D

1. https://asciidoctor.org/

2. https://github.com/asciidoc-py/asciidoc-py

3. https://asciidoc3.org/

1 and 2 seem to hate 3 (see issue trackers / web sites of all three) and meanwhile probably also vice versa. The discussion was quickly dragged into the legal realm by 1 in particular, which very obviously dampened number 3's initial enthusiasm. Additionally, 2 describes itself somewhat prominently as a "legacy processor" for Python (technically correct in the current version, but legacy's meaning here is the relationship to the new Asciidoctor-specific constructs). At the same time it promises further development but nothing usable has come out of it so far.

As a Python programmer, I would simply like to see a pure Python3 toolchain. It is quite an absurd situation at this moment. For example, my blog is supporting Markdown and ReST natively (Pelican-based). For Asciidoc - my preferred language - Pelican has a plugin, supporting different Asciidoc processors, but only at the first glance. It has also to support KaTeX. This on the other hand is no problem for Pelican's native Markdown languages (simply another plugin), but the Asciidoc plugin is too high-level. It can only use Asciidoctor in this case, requiring Ruby's KaTeX gem as an extra dependency. This gem seems to be abandoned and has compatibility issues with newer Asciidoctor versions ...

2 is no option for its installation hell alone (Asciidoc3 is pure Python, simply a pip install). I don't know, if it is able to interact with KaTeX.

From what I can see, 3 would technically offer the best initial platform for further development as a package. Could be wrong, of course.

Re: I wish Asciidoc was more popular

#60
I used asciidoc to write a book with Manning, and what I have to say is that I'm personally not a fan. The main reason is the tooling in ruby. Maybe if asciidoc was more popular than it would have more implementations in more languages, but it's really tedious to work with it in the current situation IMO.

The other thing is that, it was not easy to work with LaTeX in asciidoc last time I was doing it.

Smaller issues: the syntax really sucks.

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