AsciiDoc is a text document format for writing short documents,
articles, books and UNIX man pages. AsciiDoc files can be translated
to HTML and DocBook markups using the asciidoc(1) command. AsciiDoc
is highly configurable: both the AsciiDoc source file syntax and the
backend output markups (which can be almost any type of SGML/XML
markup) can be customized and extended by the user.
1. Introduction
Plain text is the most universal electronic document format, no matter
what computing environment you use, you can always read and write
plain text documentation. But for many applications plain text is not
a viable presentation format. HTML, PDF and roff (roff is used for
man pages) are the most widely used UNIX presentation formats.
DocBook is a popular UNIX documentation markup format which can be
translated to HTML, PDF and other presentation formats.
AsciiDoc is a plain text human readable/writable document format that
can be translated to DocBook or HTML using the asciidoc(1) command.
You can then either use asciidoc(1) generated HTML directly or run
asciidoc(1) DocBook output through your favorite DocBook toolchain or
use the AsciiDoc a2x(1) toolchain wrapper to produce PDF, man page,
HTML and other presentation formats.
The AsciiDoc format is a useful presentation format in it's own right:
AsciiDoc files are unencumbered by markup and are easily viewed,
proofed and edited.
AsciiDoc is light weight: it consists of a single Python script and a
bunch of configuration files. Apart from asciidoc(1) and a Python
interpreter, no other programs are required to convert AsciiDoc text
files to DocBook or HTML. See Example AsciiDoc Documents
below.
You write an AsciiDoc document the same way you would write a normal
text document, there are no markup tags or arcane notations. Built-in
AsciiDoc formatting rules have been kept to a minimum and are
reasonably obvious.
Text markup conventions tend to be a matter of (often strong) personal
preference: if the default syntax is not to your liking you can define
your own by editing the text based asciidoc(1) configuration files.
You can create your own configuration files to translate AsciiDoc
documents to almost any SGML/XML markup.
asciidoc(1) comes with a set of configuration files to translate
AsciiDoc articles, books or man pages to HTML or DocBook backend
formats.
2. Getting Started
2.1. Installing AsciiDoc
See the README and INSTALL files for install prerequisites and
procedures.
2.2. Example AsciiDoc Documents
The best way to quickly get a feel for AsciiDoc is to view the
AsciiDoc web site and/or distributed examples:
-
Take a look at the linked examples on the AsciiDoc web site home
page http://www.methods.co.nz/asciidoc/. Press the Page Source
sidebar menu item to view corresponding AsciiDoc source.
-
Read the *.txt source files in the distribution ./doc directory
in conjunction with the corresponding HTML and DocBook XML files.
3. AsciiDoc Document Types
There are three types of AsciiDoc documents: article, book and
manpage. All document types share the same AsciiDoc format with some
minor variations.
Use the asciidoc(1) -d (—doctype) option to specify the AsciiDoc
document type — the default document type is article.
By convention the .txt file extension is used for AsciiDoc document
source files.
3.1. article
Used for short documents, articles and general documentation. See the
AsciiDoc distribution ./doc/article.txt example.
3.2. book
Books share the same format as articles; in addition there is the
option to add level 0 book part sections.
Book documents will normally be used to produce DocBook output since
DocBook processors can automatically generate footnotes, table of
contents, list of tables, list of figures, list of examples and
indexes.
AsciiDoc markup supports standard DocBook frontmatter and backmatter
special sections (dedication, preface, bibliography, glossary,
index, colophon) plus footnotes and index entries.
Example book documents
-
Book
-
The ./doc/book.txt file in the AsciiDoc distribution.
-
Multi-part book
-
The ./doc/book-multi.txt file in the AsciiDoc distribution.
3.3. manpage
Used to generate UNIX manual pages. AsciiDoc manpage documents
observe special header title and section naming conventions — see the
Manpage Documents section for details.
See also the asciidoc(1) man page source (./doc/asciidoc.1.txt) from
the AsciiDoc distribution.
4. AsciiDoc Backends
The asciidoc(1) command translates an AsciiDoc formatted file to the
backend format specified by the -b (—backend) command-line
option. asciidoc(1) itself has little intrinsic knowledge of backend
formats, all translation rules are contained in customizable cascading
configuration files.
AsciiDoc ships with the following predefined backend output formats:
4.1. docbook
AsciiDoc generates the following DocBook document types: article, book
and refentry (corresponding to the AsciiDoc article, book and
manpage document types).
DocBook documents are not designed to be viewed directly. Most Linux
distributions come with conversion tools (collectively called a
toolchain) for converting DocBook files to presentation
formats such as Postscript, HTML, PDF, DVI, roff (the native man page
format), HTMLHelp, JavaHelp and text.
-
The —backend=docbook command-line option produces DocBook XML.
-
You can produce the older DocBook SGML format using the
—attribute=sgml command-line option.
-
Use the encoding attribute to set the character set encoding (same
as the xhtml11 backend).
-
The AsciiDoc Preamble element generates a DocBook book preface
element although it's more usual to use an explicit Preface
special section (see the ./doc/book.txt example book).
4.2. xhtml11
The default asciidoc(1) backend is xhtml11 which generates XHTML 1.1
markup styled with CSS2. Default output file have a .html extension.
xhtml11 document generation is influenced by the following
attributes (the default behavior is to generate XHTML with no section
numbers, embedded CSS and no linked admonition icon images):
-
numbered
-
Adds section numbers to section titles.
-
linkcss
-
Link CSS stylesheets. By default stylesheets are embedded (linkcss
is undefined).
-
icons
-
Link admonition paragraph and admonition block icon images and badge
images. By default icons is undefined and text is used in place of
icon images.
-
badges
-
Link badges (XHTML 1.1, CSS and Get Firefox!) in document
footers. By default badges are omitted (badges is undefined).
-
encoding
-
Set the input and output document character set encoding. For
example the —attribute=encoding=ISO-8859-1 command-line option
will set the character set encoding to ISO-8859-1.
-
This attribute specifies the character set in the output document.
-
The encoding name must correspond to a Python codec name or alias.
-
The default encoding is UTF-8.
-
quirks
-
Use the xhtml11-quirks.css stylesheet to work around IE6 browser
incompatibilities (this is the default behavior).
-
stylesdir
-
The name of the directory containing linked stylesheets. Defaults to
., the same directory as the linking document).
-
scriptsdir
-
The name of the directory containing linked JavaScripts. Defaults to
., the same directory as the linking document).
-
iconsdir
-
The name of the directory containing linked admonition and
navigation icons. Defaults to ./images/icons.
-
theme
-
Use alternative stylesheets (see Stylesheets).
4.2.1. Stylesheets
AsciiDoc XHTML output is styled using CSS2 stylesheets from the
distribution ./stylesheets/ directory.
Important
|
Browser CSS support varies from browser to browser. The shipped
examples work well on IE6, Firefox 1.0 and up, Mozilla 1.7 and up,
Opera 8 and Konqueror 3.4 but have not been tested on other browsers.
All browsers have CSS quirks, but Microsoft's IE6 has so many
omissions and errors that in order to separate clean CSS from the IE6
workarounds a separate xhtml11-quirks.css stylesheet is used. If
you're not viewing your documents with IE6 then the quirks stylesheet
can be omitted using the —attribute=quirks! command-line option.
|
Default xhtml11 stylesheets:
-
./stylesheets/xhtml11.css
-
The main stylesheet.
-
./stylesheets/xhtml11-manpage.css
-
Tweaks for manpage document type generation.
-
./stylesheets/xhtml11-quirks.css
-
Stylesheet modifications to work around IE6 browser
incompatibilities.
Use the theme attribute to select and alternative set of
stylesheets. For example, the command-line option -a theme=foo will
use stylesheets foo.css, foo-manpage.css and foo-quirks.css.
4.3. html4
This backend generates plain (unstyled) HTML 4.01 Transitional markup.
4.4. linuxdoc
Warning
|
The AsciiDoc linuxdoc backend is still distributed but is no
longer being actively developed or tested with new AsciiDoc releases
(the last supported release was AsciiDoc 6.0.3). |
-
Tables are not supported.
-
Images are not supported.
-
Callouts are not supported.
-
Horizontal labeled lists are not supported.
-
Only article document types are allowed.
-
The Abstract section can consist only of a single paragraph.
-
An AsciiDoc Preamble is not allowed.
-
The LinuxDoc output format does not support multiple labels per
labeled list item although LinuxDoc conversion programs generally
output all the labels with a warning.
-
Don't apply character formatting to the link macro attributes,
LinuxDoc does not allow displayed link text to be formatted.
The default output file name extension is .sgml.
4.5. latex
An experimental LaTeX backend has been written for AsciiDoc by
Benjamin Klum. A tutorial ./doc/latex-backend.html is included in
the AsciiDoc distribution which can also be viewed at
http://www.methods.co.nz/asciidoc/latex-backend.html.
5. Document Structure
An AsciiDoc document consists of a series of block elements
starting with an optional document Header, followed by an optional
Preamble, followed by zero or more document Sections.
Almost any combination of zero or more elements constitutes a valid
AsciiDoc document: documents can range from a single sentence to a
multi-part book.
5.1. Block Elements
Block elements consist of one or more lines of text and may contain
other block elements.
The AsciiDoc block structure can be informally summarized
[This is a rough structural guide, not a rigorous syntax
definition]
as follows:
Document ::= (Header?,Preamble?,Section*)
Header ::= (Title,(AuthorLine,RevisionLine?)?)
AuthorLine ::= (FirstName,(MiddleName?,LastName)?,EmailAddress?)
RevisionLine ::= (Revision?,Date)
Preamble ::= (SectionBody)
Section ::= (Title,SectionBody?,(Section)*)
SectionBody ::= ((BlockTitle?,Block)|BlockMacro)+
Block ::= (Paragraph|DelimitedBlock|List|Table)
List ::= (BulletedList|NumberedList|LabeledList|CalloutList)
BulletedList ::= (ListItem)+
NumberedList ::= (ListItem)+
CalloutList ::= (ListItem)+
LabeledList ::= (ItemLabel+,ListItem)+
ListItem ::= (ItemText,(List|ListParagraph|ListContinuation)*)
Table ::= (Ruler,TableHeader?,TableBody,TableFooter?)
TableHeader ::= (TableRow+,TableUnderline)
TableFooter ::= (TableRow+,TableUnderline)
TableBody ::= (TableRow+,TableUnderline)
TableRow ::= (TableData+)
Where:
-
? implies zero or one occurrence, + implies one or more
occurrences, * implies zero or more occurrences.
-
All block elements are separated by line boundaries.
-
BlockId, AttributeEntry and AttributeList block elements (not
shown) can occur almost anywhere.
-
There are a number of document type and backend specific
restrictions imposed on the block syntax.
-
The following elements cannot contain blank lines: Header, Title,
Paragraph, ItemText.
-
A ListParagraph is a Paragraph with it's listelement option set.
-
A ListContinuation is a list continuation element.
5.2. Header
The Header is optional but must start on the first line of the
document and must begin with a document title. Optional Author
and Revision lines immediately follow the title.
The author line contains the author's name optionally followed by the
author's email address. The author's name consists of a first name
followed by optional middle and last names separated by white space.
The email address is last and must be enclosed in angle <> brackets.
Author names cannot contain angle <> bracket characters.
The optional document header revision line should immediately follow
the author line. The revision line can be one of two formats:
-
A an alphanumeric document revision number followed by a date:
-
The revision number and date must be separated by a comma.
-
The revision number is optional but must contain at least one
numeric character.
-
Any non-numeric characters preceding the first numeric character
will be dropped.
-
An RCS $Id$ marker.
The document heading is separated from the remainder of the document
by one or more blank lines.
Here's an example AsciiDoc document header:
Writing Documentation using AsciiDoc
====================================
Stuart Rackham <srackham@methods.co.nz>
v2.0, February 2003
You can override or set header parameters by passing revision,
data, email, author, authorinitials, firstname and
lastname attributes using the asciidoc(1) -a (—attribute)
command-line option. For example:
$ asciidoc -a date=2004/07/27 article.txt
Attributes can also be added to the header for substitution in the
header template with Attribute Entry elements.
5.3. Preamble
The Preamble is an optional untitled section body between the document
Header and the first Section title.
5.4. Sections
AsciiDoc supports five section levels 0 to 4 (although only book
documents are allowed to contain level 0 sections). Section levels are
delineated by the section titles.
Sections are translated using configuration file markup templates. To
determine which configuration file template to use AsciiDoc first
searches for special section titles in the [specialsections]
configuration entries, if not found it uses the [sect<level>]
template.
The -n (—section-numbers) command-line option auto-numbers HTML
outputs (DocBook line numbering is handled automatically by the
DocBook toolchain commands).
5.4.1. Special Sections
In addition to normal sections, documents can contain optional
frontmatter and backmatter sections — for example: preface,
bibliography, table of contents, index.
The AsciiDoc configuration file [specialsections] section specifies
special section titles and the corresponding backend markup templates.
[specialsections] entries are formatted like:
<pattern> is a Python regular expression and <name> is the name of
a configuration file markup template section. If the <pattern>
matches an AsciiDoc document section title then the backend output is
marked up using the <name> markup template (instead of the default
sect<level> section template). The {title} attribute value is set
to the value of the matched regular expression group named title, if
there is no title group {title} defaults to the the whole of the
AsciiDoc section title.
AsciiDoc comes preconfigured with the following special section
titles:
Preface (book documents only)
Abstract (article documents only)
Dedication (book documents only)
Glossary
Bibliography|References
Colophon (book documents only)
Index
Appendix [A-Z][:.] <title>
5.5. Inline Elements
Inline document elements are used to markup character
formatting and various types of text substitution. Inline elements and
inline element syntax is defined in the asciidoc(1) configuration
files.
Here is a list of AsciiDoc inline elements in the (default) order in
which they are processed:
-
Special characters
-
These character sequences escape special characters used by
the backend markup (typically "<", ">", and "&"). See
[specialcharacters] configuration file sections.
-
Quotes
-
Characters that markup words and phrases; usually for
character formatting. See [quotes] configuration file
sections.
-
Special Words
-
Word or word phrase patterns singled out for markup without
the need for further annotation. See [specialwords]
configuration file sections.
-
Replacements
-
Each Replacement defines a word or word phrase pattern to
search for along with corresponding replacement text. See
[replacements] configuration file sections.
-
Attributes
-
Document attribute names enclosed in braces (attribute
references) are replaced by the corresponding attribute value.
-
Inline Macros
-
Inline macros are replaced by the contents of parameterized
configuration file sections.
6. Document Processing
The AsciiDoc source document is read and processed as follows:
-
The document Header is parsed, header parameter values are
substituted into the configuration file [header] template section
which is then written to the output file.
-
Each document Section is processed and it's constituent elements
translated to the output file.
-
The configuration file [footer] template section is substituted
and written to the output file.
When a block element is encountered asciidoc(1) determines the type of
block by checking in the following order (first to last): (section)
Titles, BlockMacros, Lists, DelimitedBlocks, Tables, AttributeEntrys,
AttributeLists, BlockTitles, Paragraphs.
The default paragraph definition [paradef-default] is last element
to be checked.
Knowing the parsing order will help you devise unambiguous macro, list
and block syntax rules.
Inline substitutions within block elements are performed in the
following default order:
-
Special characters
-
Quotes
-
Special words
-
Replacements
-
Attributes
-
Inline Macros
-
Passthroughs
-
Replacements2
The substitutions and substitution order performed on
Title, Paragraph and DelimitedBlock elements is determined by
configuration file parameters.
7. Text Formatting
7.1. Quoted Text
Words and phrases can be formatted by enclosing inline text with
quote characters:
-
Emphasized text
-
Word phrases 'enclosed in single quote characters' (acute
accents) or _underline characters_ are emphasized.
-
Strong text
-
Word phrases *enclosed in asterisk characters* are rendered
in a strong font (usually bold).
-
Monospaced text
-
Word phrases `enclosed in backtick characters` (grave
accents) or +plus characters+ are rendered in a monospaced font.
-
“Quoted text”
-
Phrases ``enclosed with two grave accents to the left and two
acute accents to the right'' are rendered in quotation marks.
-
Unquoted text
-
Placing #hashes around text# does nothing, it is a mechanism
to allow inline attributes to be applied to otherwise
unformatted text (see example below).
The alternative underline and plus characters, while marginally less
readable, are arguably a better choice than the backtick and
apostrophe characters as they are not normally used for, and so not
confused with, punctuation.
Quoted text can be prefixed with an attribute list. Currently
the only use made of this feature is to allow the font color,
background color and size to be specified (XHTML/HTML only, not
DocBook) using the first three positional attribute arguments. The
first argument is the text color; the second the background color; the
third is the font size. Colors are valid CSS colors and the font size
is a number which treated as em units. Here are some examples:
[red]#Red text#.
[,yellow]*bold text on a yellow background*.
[blue,#b0e0e6]+Monospaced blue text on a light blue background+
[,,2]#Double sized text#.
New quotes can be defined by editing asciidoc(1) configuration files.
See the Configuration Files section for details.
Quoted text properties
-
Quoting cannot be overlapped.
-
Different quoting types can be nested.
-
To suppress quoted text formatting place a backslash character
immediately in front of the leading quote character(s). In the case
of ambiguity between escaped and non-escaped text you will need to
escape both leading and trailing quotes, in the case of
multi-character quotes you may even need to escape individual
characters.
-
A configuration file [quotes] entry can be subsequently undefined
by setting it to a blank value.
7.1.1. Constrained and Unconstrained Quotes
There are actually two types of quotes:
Constrained quotes
Quote text that must be bounded by white space, for example a phrase
or a word. These are the most common type of quote and are the ones
discussed previously.
Unconstrained quotes
Unconstrained quotes have no boundary constraints and can be placed
anywhere within inline text. For consistency and to make them easier
to remember unconstrained quotes are double-ups of the _, *, +
and # constrained quotes:
__unconstrained emphasized text__
**unconstrained strong text**
++unconstrained monospaced text++
##unconstrained unquoted text##
The following example emboldens the letter F:
7.2. Inline Passthroughs
This special text quoting mechanism passes inline text to the output
document without the usual substitutions. There are two flavors:
-
+++Triple-plus passthrough+++
-
No change is made to the quoted text, it is passed verbatim to the
output document.
-
$$Double-dollar passthrough$$
-
Special characters are escaped but no other changes are made.
This passthrough can be prefixed with inline attributes.
7.3. Superscripts and Subscripts
Put ^carets on either^ side of the text to be superscripted, put
~tildes on either side~ of text to be subscripted. For example, the
following line:
e^{amp}#960;i^+1 = 0. H~2~O and x^10^. Some ^super text^
and ~some sub text~
Is rendered like:
eπi+1 = 0. H2O and x10. Some super text
and some sub text
Superscripts and subscripts are implemented as constrained quotes so they can be escaped with a leading backslash and prefixed
with with an attribute list.
7.4. Line Breaks (HTML/XHTML)
A plus character preceded by at least one space character at the end
of a line forces a line break. It generates an HTML line break
(<br />) tag. Line breaks are ignored when outputting to DocBook
since it has no line break element.
7.5. Rulers (HTML/XHTML)
A line of three or more apostrophe characters will generate an HTML
ruler (<hr />) tag. Ignored when generating non-HTML output formats.
7.6. Tabs
By default tab characters input files will translated to 8 spaces. Tab
expansion is set with the tabsize entry in the configuration file
[miscellaneous] section and can be overridden in the include block macro
by setting a tabsize attribute in the macro's attribute list. For example:
include::addendum.txt[tabsize=2]
The tab size can also be set using the attribute command-line option,
for example —attribute=tabsize=4
7.7. Replacements
The following replacements are defined in the default AsciiDoc
configuration:
(C) copyright, (TM) trademark, (R) registered trademark,
-- em dash, ... ellipsis.
Which are rendered as:
© copyright, ™ trademark, ® registered trademark,
— em dash, … ellipsis.
The Configuration Files section explains how to configure your
own replacements.
7.8. Special Words
Words defined in [specialwords] configuration file sections are
automatically marked up without having to be explicitly notated.
The Configuration Files section explains how to add and replace
special words.
8. Titles
Document and section titles can be in either of two formats:
8.1. Two line titles
A two line title consists of a title line, starting hard against the
left margin, and an underline. Section underlines consist a repeated
character pairs spanning the width of the preceding title (give or
take up to three characters):
The default title underlines for each of the document levels are:
Level 0 (top level): ======================
Level 1: ----------------------
Level 2: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Level 3: ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Level 4 (bottom level): ++++++++++++++++++++++
Examples:
Level One Section Title
-----------------------
Level 2 Subsection Title
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
8.2. One line titles
One line titles consist of a line starting with one or more equals
characters (the number of equals corresponds the section level)
followed by a space followed by the title text. Here are some
examples:
= Document Title (level 0)
== Section title (level 1)
=== Section title (level 2)
==== Section title (level 3)
===== Section title (level 4)
The one-line title syntax can be changed by editing the configuration
file [titles] section sect0…sect4 entries.
9. BlockTitles
A BlockTitle element is a single line beginning with a period followed
by a title. The title is applied to the next Paragraph,
DelimitedBlock, List, Table or BlockMacro. For example:
.Notes
- Note 1.
- Note 2.
is rendered as:
Notes
10. BlockId Element
A BlockId is a single line block element containing a unique
identifier enclosed in double square brackets. It is used to assign an
identifier to the ensuing block element for use by referring links. For
example:
[[chapter-titles]]
Chapter titles can be ...
The preceding example identifies the following paragraph so it can be
linked from other location, for example with
<<chapter-titles,chapter titles>>.
BlockId elements can be applied to Title, Paragraph, List,
DelimitedBlock, Table and BlockMacro elements. The BlockId element is
really just an AttributeList with a special syntax which sets the
{id} attribute for substitution in the subsequent block's markup
template.
The BlockId element has the same syntax and serves a similar
function to the anchor inline macro.
11. Paragraphs
Paragraphs are terminated by a blank line, the end of file, or the
start of a DelimitedBlock.
Paragraph markup is specified by configuration file [paradef*]
sections. AsciiDoc ships with the following predefined paragraph
types:
11.1. Default Paragraph
A Default paragraph ([paradef-default]) consists of one or more
non-blank lines of text. The first line must start hard against the
left margin (no intervening white space). The processing expectation
of the default paragraph type is that of a normal paragraph of text.
The verse paragraph style preserves line boundaries and is
useful for lyrics and poems. For example:
[verse]
Consul *necessitatibus* per id,
consetetur, eu pro everti postulant
homero verear ea mea, qui.
Renders:
Consul necessitatibus per id,
consetetur, eu pro everti postulant
homero verear ea mea, qui.
11.2. Literal Paragraph
A Literal paragraph ([paradef-literal]) consists of one or more
lines of text, where the first line is indented by one or more space
or tab characters. Literal paragraphs are rendered verbatim in a
monospaced font usually without any distinguishing background or
border. There is no text formatting or substitutions within Literal
paragraphs apart from Special Characters and Callouts. For example:
Consul *necessitatibus* per id,
consetetur, eu pro everti postulant
homero verear ea mea, qui.
Renders:
Consul *necessitatibus* per id,
consetetur, eu pro everti postulant
homero verear ea mea, qui.
11.3. Admonition Paragraphs
Tip, Note, Important, Warning and Caution paragraph
definitions support the corresponding DocBook admonishment elements —
just write a normal paragraph but place NOTE:, TIP:, IMPORTANT:,
WARNING: or CAUTION: as the first word of the paragraph. For
example:
NOTE: This is an example note.
or the alternative syntax:
[NOTE]
This is an example note.
Renders:
Note
|
This is an example note. |
Tip
|
If your admonition is more than a single paragraph use an
admonition block instead. |
11.3.1. Admonition Icons and Captions
Note
|
Admonition customization with icons, iconsdir, icon and
caption attributes does not apply when generating DocBook output. If
you are going the DocBook route then the a2x(1) —no-icons
and —icons-dir options can be used to set the appropriate XSL
Stylesheets parameters. |
By default the asciidoc(1) xhtml11 and html4 backends generate
text captions instead of icon image links. To generate links to icon
images define the icons attribute, for example using the -a
icons command-line option.
The iconsdir attribute sets the location of linked icon
images.
You can override the default icon image using the icon attribute to
specify the path of the linked image. For example:
[icon="./images/icons/wink.png"]
NOTE: What lovely war.
Use the caption attribute to customise the admonition captions (not
applicable to docbook backend). The following example suppresses the
icon image and customizes the caption of a NOTE admonition (undefining
the icons attribute with icons=None is only necessary if
admonition icons have been enabled):
[icons=None, caption="My Special Note"]
NOTE: This is my special note.
This subsection also applies to Admonition Blocks.
12. Delimited Blocks
Delimited blocks are blocks of text enveloped by leading and trailing
delimiter lines (normally a series of four or more repeated
characters). The behavior of Delimited Blocks is specified by entries
in configuration file [blockdef*] sections.
12.1. Predefined Delimited Blocks
AsciiDoc ships with a number of predefined DelimitedBlocks (see the
asciidoc.conf configuration file in the asciidoc(1) program
directory):
Predefined delimited block underlines:
CommentBlock: //////////////////////////
PassthroughBlock: ++++++++++++++++++++++++++
ListingBlock: --------------------------
LiteralBlock: ..........................
SidebarBlock: **************************
QuoteBlock: __________________________
Table: Default DelimitedBlock substitutions
|
Passthrough
|
Listing
|
Literal
|
Sidebar
|
Quote
|
Callouts
|
No
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
No
|
No
|
Attributes
|
Yes
|
No
|
No
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
Inline Macros
|
Yes
|
No
|
No
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
Quotes
|
No
|
No
|
No
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
Replacements
|
No
|
No
|
No
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
Special chars
|
No
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
Special words
|
No
|
No
|
No
|
Yes
|
Yes
|
12.2. Listing Blocks
ListingBlocks are rendered verbatim in a monospaced font, they retain
line and whitespace formatting and often distinguished by a background
or border. There is no text formatting or substitutions within Listing
blocks apart from Special Characters and Callouts. Listing blocks are
often used for code and file listings.
Here's an example:
--------------------------------------
#include <stdio.h>
int main() {
printf("Hello World!\n");
exit(0);
}
--------------------------------------
Which will be rendered like:
#include <stdio.h>
int main() {
printf("Hello World!\n");
exit(0);
}
12.3. Literal Blocks
LiteralBlocks behave just like LiteralParagraphs except you don't have
to indent the contents.
LiteralBlocks can be used to resolve list ambiguity. If the following
list was just indented it would be processed as an ordered list (not
an indented paragraph):
....................
1. Item 1
2. Item 2
....................
Renders:
The literal block has a verse style (useful for lyrics and
poems). For example:
[verse]
......................................
Consul *necessitatibus* per id,
consetetur, eu pro everti postulant
homero verear ea mea, qui.
Qui in magna commodo, est labitur
dolorum an. Est ne *magna primis
adolescens*.
......................................
Renders:
Consul necessitatibus per id,
consetetur, eu pro everti postulant
homero verear ea mea, qui.
Qui in magna commodo, est labitur
dolorum an. Est ne magna primis
adolescens.
12.4. SidebarBlocks
A sidebar is a short piece of text presented outside the narrative
flow of the main text. The sidebar is normally presented inside a
bordered box to set it apart from the main text.
The sidebar body is treated like a normal section body.
Here's an example:
.An Example Sidebar
************************************************
Any AsciiDoc SectionBody element (apart from
SidebarBlocks) can be placed inside a sidebar.
************************************************
Which will be rendered like:
12.5. Comment Blocks
The contents of CommentBlocks are not processed; they are useful for
annotations and for excluding new or outdated content that you don't
want displayed. Here's and example:
//////////////////////////////////////////
CommentBlock contents are not processed by
asciidoc(1).
//////////////////////////////////////////
See also Comment Lines.
12.6. Passthrough Blocks
PassthroughBlocks are for backend specific markup, text is only
subject to attribute and macro substitution. PassthroughBlock content
will generally be backend specific. Here's an example:
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
<table border="1"><tr>
<td>Cell 1</td>
<td>Cell 2</td>
</tr></table>
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
12.7. Quote Blocks
QuoteBlocks are used for quoted passages of text. attribution and
citetitle named attributes specify the author and source of the
quote (they are equivalent to positional attribute list entries 1 and
2 respectively). Both attributes are optional and the block body is
treated like a SectionBody. For example:
[Bertrand Russell, The World of Mathematics (1956)]
____________________________________________________________________
A good notation has subtlety and suggestiveness which at times makes
it almost seem like a live teacher.
____________________________________________________________________
Which is rendered as:
A good notation has subtlety and suggestiveness which at times makes
it almost seem like a live teacher.
The World of Mathematics (1956)
— Bertrand Russell
In this example unquoted positional attributes have been used, the
following quoted positional and named attributes are equivalent (if
the attribute list contained commas then quoting would have been
mandatory):
["Bertrand Russell","The World of Mathematics (1956)"]
[attribution="Bertrand Russell",citetitle="The World of Mathematics (1956)"]
You can render poems and lyrics with a combination of Quote and
Literal blocks. For example:
[William Blake,from Auguries of Innocence]
_____________________________________________________________________
[verse]
.....................................................................
To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.
.....................................................................
_____________________________________________________________________
Which is rendered as:
To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.
from Auguries of Innocence
— William Blake
12.8. Example Blocks
ExampleBlocks encapsulate the DocBook Example element and are used
for, well, examples. Example blocks can be titled by preceding them
with a BlockTitle. DocBook toolchains normally number examples and
generate a List of Examples backmatter section.
Example blocks are delimited by lines of equals characters and you can
put any block elements apart from Titles, BlockTitles and Sidebars)
inside an example block. For example:
.An example
=====================================================================
Qui in magna commodo, est labitur dolorum an. Est ne magna primis
adolescens.
=====================================================================
Renders:
Example: An example
Qui in magna commodo, est labitur dolorum an. Est ne magna primis
adolescens.
The title prefix that is automatically inserted by asciidoc(1) can be
customized with the caption attribute (xhtml11 and html4
backends). For example
[caption="Example 1: "]
.An example with a custom caption
=====================================================================
Qui in magna commodo, est labitur dolorum an. Est ne magna primis
adolescens.
=====================================================================
12.9. Admonition Blocks
The ExampleBlock definition includes a set of admonition
styles (NOTE, TIP, IMPORTANT, WARNING, CAUTION) for generating
admonition blocks (admonitions containing more than just a
simple paragraph). Just precede the ExampleBlock with an
attribute list containing the admonition style name. For example:
[NOTE]
.A NOTE block
=====================================================================
Qui in magna commodo, est labitur dolorum an. Est ne magna primis
adolescens.
. Fusce euismod commodo velit.
. Vivamus fringilla mi eu lacus.
.. Fusce euismod commodo velit.
.. Vivamus fringilla mi eu lacus.
. Donec eget arcu bibendum
nunc consequat lobortis.
=====================================================================
Renders:
Note
|
A NOTE block
Qui in magna commodo, est labitur dolorum an. Est ne magna primis
adolescens.
-
Fusce euismod commodo velit.
-
Vivamus fringilla mi eu lacus.
-
Fusce euismod commodo velit.
-
Vivamus fringilla mi eu lacus.
-
Donec eget arcu bibendum
nunc consequat lobortis.
|
See also Admonition Icons and Captions.
13. Lists
List types
-
Bulleted lists. Also known as itemized or unordered lists.
-
Numbered lists. Also called ordered lists.
-
Labeled lists. Sometimes called variable or definition lists.
-
Callout lists (a list of callout annotations).
List behavior
-
Indentation is optional and does not determine nesting, indentation
does however make the source more readable.
-
A nested list must use a different syntax from its parent so that
asciidoc(1) can distinguish the start of a nested list.
-
By default lists of the same type can only be nested two deep; this
could be increased by defining new list definitions.
-
In addition to nested lists a list item will include immediately
following Literal paragraphs.
-
Use List Item Continuation to include other block elements
in a list item.
13.1. Bulleted and Numbered Lists
Bulleted list items start with a dash or an asterisk followed by a
space or tab character. Bulleted list syntaxes are:
- List item.
* List item.
Numbered list items start with an optional number or letter followed
by a period followed by a space or tab character. List numbering is
optional. Numbered list syntaxes are:
. Integer numbered list item.
1. Integer numbered list item with optional numbering.
.. Lowercase letter numbered list item.
a. Lowercase letter numbered list item with optional numbering.
Here are some examples:
- Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.
* Fusce euismod commodo velit.
* Qui in magna commodo, est labitur dolorum an. Est ne magna primis
adolescens. Sit munere ponderum dignissim et. Minim luptatum et
vel.
* Vivamus fringilla mi eu lacus.
* Donec eget arcu bibendum nunc consequat lobortis.
- Nulla porttitor vulputate libero.
. Fusce euismod commodo velit.
. Vivamus fringilla mi eu lacus.
.. Fusce euismod commodo velit.
.. Vivamus fringilla mi eu lacus.
. Donec eget arcu bibendum nunc consequat lobortis.
- Praesent eget purus quis magna eleifend eleifend.
1. Fusce euismod commodo velit.
a. Fusce euismod commodo velit.
b. Vivamus fringilla mi eu lacus.
c. Donec eget arcu bibendum nunc consequat lobortis.
2. Vivamus fringilla mi eu lacus.
3. Donec eget arcu bibendum nunc consequat lobortis.
4. Nam fermentum mattis ante.
Which render as:
-
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.
-
Fusce euismod commodo velit.
-
Qui in magna commodo, est labitur dolorum an. Est ne magna primis
adolescens. Sit munere ponderum dignissim et. Minim luptatum et
vel.
-
Vivamus fringilla mi eu lacus.
-
Donec eget arcu bibendum nunc consequat lobortis.
-
Nulla porttitor vulputate libero.
-
Fusce euismod commodo velit.
-
Vivamus fringilla mi eu lacus.
-
Fusce euismod commodo velit.
-
Vivamus fringilla mi eu lacus.
-
Donec eget arcu bibendum nunc consequat lobortis.
-
Praesent eget purus quis magna eleifend eleifend.
-
Fusce euismod commodo velit.
-
Fusce euismod commodo velit.
-
Vivamus fringilla mi eu lacus.
-
Donec eget arcu bibendum nunc consequat lobortis.
-
Vivamus fringilla mi eu lacus.
-
Donec eget arcu bibendum nunc consequat lobortis.
-
Nam fermentum mattis ante.
13.2. Vertical Labeled Lists
Labeled list items consist of one or more text labels followed the
text of the list item.
An item label begins a line with an alphanumeric character hard
against the left margin and ends with a double colon :: or
semi-colon ;;.
The list item text consists of one or more lines of text starting on
the line immediately following the label and can be followed by nested
List or ListParagraph elements. Item text can be optionally indented.
Here are some examples:
Lorem::
Fusce euismod commodo velit.
Fusce euismod commodo velit.
Ipsum::
Vivamus fringilla mi eu lacus.
* Vivamus fringilla mi eu lacus.
* Donec eget arcu bibendum nunc consequat lobortis.
Dolor::
Donec eget arcu bibendum nunc consequat lobortis.
Suspendisse;;
A massa id sem aliquam auctor.
Morbi;;
Pretium nulla vel lorem.
In;;
Dictum mauris in urna.
Which render as:
-
Lorem
-
Fusce euismod commodo velit.
Fusce euismod commodo velit.
-
Ipsum
-
Vivamus fringilla mi eu lacus.
-
Dolor
-
Donec eget arcu bibendum nunc consequat lobortis.
-
Suspendisse
-
A massa id sem aliquam auctor.
-
Morbi
-
Pretium nulla vel lorem.
-
In
-
Dictum mauris in urna.
13.3. Horizontal Labeled Lists
Horizontal labeled lists differ from vertical labeled lists in that
the label and the list item sit side-by-side as opposed to the item
under the label. Item text must begin on the same line as the label.
Here are some examples:
*Lorem*:: Fusce euismod commodo velit.
Qui in magna commodo, est labitur dolorum an. Est ne magna primis
adolescens.
Fusce euismod commodo velit.
*Ipsum*:: Vivamus fringilla mi eu lacus.
* Vivamus fringilla mi eu lacus.
* Donec eget arcu bibendum nunc consequat lobortis.
*Dolor*:: Donec eget arcu bibendum nunc consequat lobortis.
Sit munere ponderum dignissim et. Minim luptatum et vel.
Which render as:
Lorem
|
Fusce euismod commodo velit.
Qui in magna commodo, est labitur dolorum an. Est ne magna primis
adolescens.
Fusce euismod commodo velit.
|
Ipsum
|
Vivamus fringilla mi eu lacus.
|
Dolor
|
Donec eget arcu bibendum nunc consequat lobortis.
Sit munere ponderum dignissim et. Minim luptatum et vel.
|
Warning
|
-
Use vertical labeled lists in preference to horizontal labeled lists
— current PDF toolchains do not make a good job of determining
the relative column widths.
-
If you are generating DocBook markup the horizontal labeled lists
should be nested because the DocBook XML V4.2 DTD does not permit
nested informal tables (although DocBook XSL Stylesheets
process them correctly).
|
13.4. Question and Answer Lists
AsciiDoc comes pre-configured with a labeled list for generating
DocBook question and answer (Q&A) lists (?? label delimiter).
Example:
Question one??
Answer one.
Question two??
Answer two.
Renders:
-
Question one
Answer one.
-
Question two
Answer two.
13.5. Glossary Lists
AsciiDoc comes pre-configured with a labeled list (:- label
delimiter) for generating DocBook glossary lists. Example:
A glossary term:-
The corresponding definition.
A second glossary term:-
The corresponding definition.
For working examples see the article.txt and book.txt documents in
the AsciiDoc ./doc distribution directory.
Note
|
To generate valid DocBook output glossary lists must be located
in a glossary section. |
13.6. Bibliography Lists
AsciiDoc comes with a predefined itemized list (+ item bullet) for
generating bibliography entries. Example:
+ [[[taoup]]] Eric Steven Raymond. 'The Art of UNIX
Programming'. Addison-Wesley. ISBN 0-13-142901-9.
+ [[[walsh-muellner]]] Norman Walsh & Leonard Muellner.
'DocBook - The Definitive Guide'. O'Reilly & Associates.
1999. ISBN 1-56592-580-7.
The [[[<reference>]]] syntax is a bibliography entry anchor, it
generates an anchor named <reference> and additionally displays
[<reference>] at the anchor position. For example [[[taoup]]]
generates an anchor named taoup that displays [taoup] at the
anchor position. Cite the reference from elsewhere your document using
<<taoup>>, this displays a hyperlink ([taoup]) to the
corresponding bibliography entry anchor.
For working examples see the article.txt and book.txt documents in
the AsciiDoc ./doc distribution directory.
Note
|
To generate valid DocBook output bibliography lists must be
located in a bibliography section. |
13.7. List Item Continuation
To include subsequent block elements in list items (in addition to
implicitly included nested lists and Literal paragraphs) place a
separator line containing a single plus character between the list
item and the ensuing list continuation element. Multiple block
elements (excluding section Titles and BlockTitles) may be included in
a list item using this technique. For example:
Here's an example of list item continuation:
1. List item one.
+
List item one continued with a second paragraph followed by an
Indented block.
+
.................
$ ls *.sh
$ mv *.sh ~/tmp
.................
+
List item one continued with a third paragraph.
2. List item two.
List item two literal paragraph (no continuation required).
- Nested list (item one).
Nested list literal paragraph (no continuation required).
+
Nested list appended list item one paragraph
- Nested list item two.
Renders:
-
List item one.
List item one continued with a second paragraph followed by a Listing
block.
$ ls *.sh
$ mv *.sh ~/tmp
List item one continued with a third paragraph.
-
List item two.
List item two literal paragraph (no continuation required).
13.8. List Block
A List block is a special delimited block containing a list element.
-
All elements between in the List Block are part of the preceding
list item. In this respect the List block behaves like List Item Continuation except that list items contained within the
block do not require explicit + list item continuation lines:
-
The block delimiter is a single line containing two dashes.
-
Any block title or attributes are passed to the first element inside
the block.
The List Block is useful for:
-
Lists with long multi-element list items.
-
Nesting a list within a parent list item (by default nested lists
follow the preceding list item).
Here's an example of a nested list block:
.Nested List Block
1. List item one.
+
This paragraph is part of the preceding list item
+
--
a. This list is nested and does not require explicit item continuation.
This paragraph is part of the preceding list item
b. List item b.
This paragraph belongs to list item b.
--
+
This paragraph belongs to item 1.
2. Item 2 of the outer list.
Renders:
Nested List Block
-
List item one.
This paragraph is part of the preceding list item
-
This list is nested and does not require explicit item continuation.
This paragraph is part of the preceding list item
-
List item b.
This paragraph belongs to list item b.
This paragraph belongs to item 1.
-
Item 2 of the outer list.
14. Footnotes
The shipped AsciiDoc configuration includes the footnote:[<text>]
inline macro for generating footnotes. The footnote text can span
multiple lines. Example footnote:
A footnote footnote:[An example footnote.]
Which renders:
A footnote
[An example footnote.]
Footnotes are primarily useful when generating DocBook output —
DocBook conversion programs render footnote outside the primary text
flow.
15. Indexes
The shipped AsciiDoc configuration includes the inline macros for
generating document index entries.
-
indexterm:[<primary>,<secondary>,<tertiary>]
-
(((<primary>,<secondary>,<tertiary>)))
-
This inline macro generates an index term (the <secondary> and
<tertiary> attributes are optional). For example
indexterm:[Tigers,Big cats] (or, using the alternative syntax
(((Tigers,Big cats))). Index terms that have secondary and
tertiary entries also generate separate index terms for the
secondary and tertiary entries. The index terms appear in the
index, not the primary text flow.
-
indexterm2:[<primary>]
-
((<primary>))
-
This inline macro generates an index term that appears in both the
index and the primary text flow. The <primary> should not be
padded to the left or right with white space characters.
For working examples see the article.txt and book.txt documents in
the AsciiDoc ./doc distribution directory.
Note
|
Index entries only really make sense if you are generating
DocBook markup — DocBook conversion programs automatically generate
an index at the point an Index section appears in source document. |
16. Callouts
Callouts are a mechanism for annotating verbatim text (source code,
computer output and user input for example). Callout markers are
placed inside the annotated text while the actual annotations are
presented in a callout list after the annotated text. Here's an
example:
.MS-DOS directory listing
.....................................................
10/17/97 9:04 <DIR> bin
10/16/97 14:11 <DIR> DOS <1>
10/16/97 14:40 <DIR> Program Files
10/16/97 14:46 <DIR> TEMP
10/17/97 9:04 <DIR> tmp
10/16/97 14:37 <DIR> WINNT
10/16/97 14:25 119 AUTOEXEC.BAT <2>
2/13/94 6:21 54,619 COMMAND.COM <2>
10/16/97 14:25 115 CONFIG.SYS <2>
11/16/97 17:17 61,865,984 pagefile.sys
2/13/94 6:21 9,349 WINA20.386 <3>
.....................................................
<1> This directory holds MS-DOS.
<2> System startup code for DOS.
<3> Some sort of Windows 3.1 hack.
Which renders:
MS-DOS directory listing
10/17/97 9:04 <DIR> bin
10/16/97 14:11 <DIR> DOS (1)
10/16/97 14:40 <DIR> Program Files
10/16/97 14:46 <DIR> TEMP
10/17/97 9:04 <DIR> tmp
10/16/97 14:37 <DIR> WINNT
10/16/97 14:25 119 AUTOEXEC.BAT (2)
2/13/94 6:21 54,619 COMMAND.COM (2)
10/16/97 14:25 115 CONFIG.SYS (2)
11/16/97 17:17 61,865,984 pagefile.sys
2/13/94 6:21 9,349 WINA20.386 (3)
-
This directory holds MS-DOS.
-
System startup code for DOS.
-
Some sort of Windows 3.1 hack.
Explanation
-
The callout marks are whole numbers enclosed in angle brackets that
refer to an item index in the following callout list.
-
By default callout marks are confined to LiteralParagraphs,
LiteralBlocks and ListingBlocks (although this is a configuration
file option and can be changed).
-
Callout list item numbering is fairly relaxed — list items can
start with <n>, n> or > where n is the optional list item
number (in the latter case list items starting with a single >
character are implicitly numbered starting at one).
-
Callout lists should not be nested — start list items hard against
the left margin.
-
If you want to present a number inside angle brackets you'll need to
escape it with a backslash to prevent it being interpreted as a
callout mark.
16.1. Implementation Notes
Callout marks are generated by the callout inline macro while
callout lists are generated using the callout list definition. The
callout macro and callout list are special in that they work
together. The callout inline macro is not enabled by the normal
macros substitutions option, instead it has it's own callouts
substitution option.
The following attributes are available during inline callout macro
substitution:
-
{index}
-
The callout list item index inside the angle brackets.
-
{coid}
-
An identifier formatted like CO<listnumber>-<index> that
uniquely identifies the callout mark. For example CO2-4
identifies the fourth callout mark in the second set of callout
marks.
The {coids} attribute can be used during callout list item
substitution — it is a space delimited list of callout IDs that refer
to the explanatory list item.
17. Macros
Macros are a mechanism for substituting parameterized text into output
documents.
Macros have a name, a single target argument and an attribute
list. The default syntax is <name>:<target>[<attributelist>] (for
inline macros) and <name>::<target>[<attributelist>] (for block
macros). Here are some examples:
http://www.methods.co.nz/asciidoc/index.html[Asciidoc home page]
include::chapt1.txt[tabsize=2]
mailto:srackham@methods.co.nz[]
Macro behavior
-
<name> is the macro name. It can only contain letters, digits or
dash characters and cannot start with a dash.
-
The optional <target> cannot contain white space characters.
-
<attributelist> is a list of attributes enclosed in square
brackets.
-
The attribute list is mandatory even if it contains no attributes.
-
Expansion of non-system macro references can be escaped by
prefixing a backslash character.
-
Block macro attribute reference substitution is performed prior to
macro expansion.
-
The substitutions performed prior to Inline macro macro expansion
are determined by the inline context.
17.1. Inline Macros
Inline Macros occur in an inline element context. Predefined Inline
macros include URLs, image and link macros.
17.1.1. URLs
Standard http, https, ftp, file, mailto and callto URLs are rendered
using predefined inline macros.
The default AsciiDoc inline macro syntax is very similar to a URL: all
you need to do is append an attribute list containing an optional
caption immediately following the URL. If no caption text is provided
the URL itself is displayed.
Here are some examples:
http://www.methods.co.nz/asciidoc/[The AsciiDoc home page]
mailto:joe.bloggs@foobar.com[email Joe Bloggs]
mailto:joe.bloggs@foobar.com[]
callto:joe.bloggs[]
Which are rendered:
The AsciiDoc home page
email Joe Bloggs
joe.bloggs@foobar.com
joe.bloggs
Tip
|
If the <target> necessitates space characters they should be
replaced by %20. For example large%20image.png. |
17.1.2. Internal Cross References
Two AsciiDoc inline macros are provided for creating hypertext links
within an AsciiDoc document. You can use either the standard macro
syntax or the (preferred) alternative.
anchor
Used to specify hypertext link targets:
[[<id>,<xreflabel>]]
anchor:<id>[<xreflabel>]
The <id> is a unique identifier that must begin with a letter. The
optional <xreflabel> is the text to be displayed by captionless
xref macros that refer to this anchor. The optional <xreflabel> is
only really useful when generating DocBook output. Example anchor:
You may have noticed that the syntax of this inline element is the
same as that of the BlockId block element, this is no
coincidence since they are functionally equivalent.
xref
Creates a hypertext link to a document anchor.
<<<id>,<caption>>>
xref:<id>[<caption>]
The <id> refers to an existing anchor <id>. The optional
<caption> is the link's displayed text. If <caption> is not
specified then the <id>, enclosed in square brackets, is displayed.
Example:
17.1.3. Linking to Local Documents
Hypertext links to files on the local filesystem are specified using
the link inline macro.
The link macro generates relative URLs. The link macro <target> is
the target file name (relative to the file system location of the
referring document). The optional <caption> is the link's displayed
text. If <caption> is not specified then <target> is displayed.
Example:
link:downloads/foo.zip[download foo.zip]
You can use the <filename>#<id> syntax to refer to an anchor within
a target document but this usually only makes sense when targeting
HTML documents.
Images can serve as hyperlinks using the image macro.
17.1.4. Images
Inline images are inserted into the output document using the image
macro. The inline syntax is:
image:<target>[<attributes>]
The contents of the image file <target> is displayed. To display the
image it's file format must be supported by the target backend
application. HTML and DocBook applications normally support PNG or JPG
files.
<target> file name paths are relative to the location of the
referring document.
Image macro attributes
-
The optional first positional attribute list entry specifies the
alternative text which is displayed if the output application is
unable to process the image file. For example:
image:images/logo.png[Company Logo]
-
The optional width and height named attributes scale the image
size and can be used in any combination. The following example
scales the previous example to a height of 32 pixels:
image:images/logo.png["Company Logo",height=32]
-
The optional link named attribute is used to link the image to
an external document. The following example links a screenshot
thumbnail to a full size version:
image:screen-thumbnail.png[height=32,link="screen.png"]
17.2. Block Macros
A Block macro reference must be contained in a single line separated
either side by a blank line or a block delimiter.
Block macros behave just like Inline macros, with the following
differences:
-
They occur in a block context.
-
The default syntax is <name>::<target>[<attributelist>] (two
colons, not one).
-
Markup template section names end in -blockmacro instead of
-inlinemacro.
17.2.1. Block Identifier
The Block Identifier macro sets the id attribute and has the same
syntax as the anchor inline macro since it performs
essentially the same function — block templates employ the id
attribute as a block link target. For example:
This is equivalent to the [id="X30"] block attribute list.
17.2.2. Images
Formal titled images are inserted into the output document using the
image macro. The syntax is:
image::<target>[<attributes>]
In all respects, apart from context and the optional title, the use of
the block image macro is exactly the same as it's inline counterpart.
Images can be titled by preceding the image macro with a
BlockTitle. DocBook toolchains normally number examples and
generate a List of Figures backmatter section.
For example:
.Main circuit board
image::images/layout.png[J14P main circuit board]
xhtml11 and html4 backends precede the title with a Figure :
prefix. You can customise this prefix with the caption attribute.
For example:
.Main circuit board
[caption="Figure 2:"]
image::images/layout.png[J14P main circuit board]
17.2.3. Comment Lines
Single lines starting with two forward slashes hard up against the
left margin are treated as comments and are stripped from the output.
Comment lines have been implemented as a block macro and are only
valid in a block context — they are not treated as comments inside
paragraphs or delimited blocks. Example comment line:
See also Comment Blocks.
17.3. System Macros
System macros are block macros that perform a predefined task which is
hardwired into the asciidoc(1) program.
-
You can't escape system macros with a leading backslash character
(as you can with other macros).
-
The syntax and tasks performed by system macros is built into
asciidoc(1) so they don't appear in configuration files. You can
however customize the syntax by adding entries to a configuration
file [macros] section.
17.3.1. Include Macros
The include and include1 system macros to include the contents of
a named file into the source document.
The include macro includes a file as if it were part of the parent
document — tabs are expanded and system macros processed. The
contents of include1 files are not subject to tab expansion or
system macro processing nor are attribute or lower priority
substitutions performed. The include1 macro's main use is to include
verbatim embedded CSS or scripts into configuration file headers.
Example:
include::chapter1.txt[tabsize=4]
Include macro behavior
-
If the included file name is specified with a relative path then the
path is relative to the location of the referring document.
-
Include macros can appear inside configuration files.
-
Files included from within DelimitedBlocks are read to completion
to avoid false end-of-block underline termination.
-
File inclusion is limited to a depth of 5 to catch recursive loops.
-
Attribute references are expanded inside the include target; if an
an attribute is undefined then the included file is silently
skipped.
-
The tabsize macro attribute sets the the number of space
characters to be used for tab expansion in the included file.
17.3.2. Conditional Inclusion Macros
Lines of text in the source document can be selectively included or
excluded from processing based on the the existence (or not) of a
document attribute. There are two forms of conditional inclusion
macro usage, the first includes document text between the ifdef and
endif macros if a document attribute is defined:
ifdef::<attribute>[]
:
endif::<attribute>[]
The second for includes document text between the ifndef and endif
macros if the attribute is not defined:
ifndef::<attribute>[]
:
endif::<attribute>[]
<attribute> is an attribute name which is optional in the trailing
endif macro.
Take a look at the *.conf configuration files in the AsciiDoc
distribution for examples of conditional inclusion macro usage.
17.3.3. eval, sys and sys2 System Macros
These block macros exhibit the same behavior as their same named <X24,
system attribute references>>. The difference is that system macros
occur in a block macro context whereas system attributes are confined
to an inline context where attribute substitution is enabled.
The following example displays a long directory listing inside a
literal block:
------------------
sys::[ls -l *.txt]
------------------
17.3.4. Template System Macro
The template block macro allows the inclusion of one configuration
file template section within another. The following example includes
the [admonitionblock] section in the [admonitionparagraph]
section:
[admonitionparagraph]
template::[admonitionblock]
Template macro behavior
-
The template::[] macro is useful for factoring configuration file
markup template section content but can be included in any sections.
-
template::[] macros cannot be nested.
-
template::[] macro expansion is applied to all sections
after all configuration files have been read.
17.4. Macro Definitions
Each entry in the configuration [macros] section is a macro
definition which can take one of the following forms:
-
<pattern>=<name>
-
Inline macro definition.
-
<pattern>=#<name>
-
Block macro definition.
-
<pattern>=+<name>
-
System macro definition.
-
<pattern>
-
Delete the existing macro with this <pattern>.
<pattern> is a Python regular expression and <name> is the name of
a markup template. If <name> is omitted then it is the value of the
regular expression match group name.
Here's what happens during macro substitution
-
Each contextually relevant macro pattern from the [macros]
section is matched against the input source line.
-
If a match is found the text to be substituted is loaded from a
configuration markup template section named like
<name>-inlinemacro or <name>-blockmacro (depending on the macro
type).
-
Global and macro attribute list attributes are substituted in the
macro's markup template.
-
The substituted template replaces the macro reference in the output
document.
18. Tables
Tables are the most complex AsciiDoc elements and this section is
quite long.
[The current table syntax is overly complicated
and unwieldy to edit, hopefully a more usable syntax will appear in
future versions of AsciiDoc.]
Note
|
AsciiDoc generates nice HTML tables, but the current crop of
DocBook toolchains render tables with varying degrees of success. Use
tables only when really necessary. |
18.1. Example Tables
The following annotated examples are all you'll need to start creating
your own tables.
The only non-obvious thing you'll need to remember are the column stop
characters:
-
Backtick (`) — align left.
-
Single quote (') — align right.
-
Period (.) — align center.
Simple table:
`---`---
1 2
3 4
5 6
--------
Output:
Table with title, header and footer:
.An example table
[grid="all"]
'---------.--------------
Column 1 Column 2
-------------------------
1 Item 1
2 Item 2
3 Item 3
-------------------------
6 Three items
-------------------------
Output:
Table: An example table
Column 1
|
Column 2
|
6
|
Three items
|
1
|
Item 1
|
2
|
Item 2
|
3
|
Item 3
|
Four columns totaling 15% of the pagewidth, CSV data:
[frame="all"]
````~15
1,2,3,4
a,b,c,d
A,B,C,D
~~~~~~~~
Output:
A table with a numeric ruler and externally sourced CSV data:
[frame="all", grid="all"]
.15`20`25`20`~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
ID,Customer Name,Contact Name,Customer Address,Phone
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
include::customers.csv[]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Renders:
ID
|
Customer Name
|
Contact Name
|
Customer Address
|
Phone
|
AROUT
|
Around the Horn
|
Thomas Hardy
|
120 Hanover Sq.
London
|
(171) 555-7788
|
BERGS
|
Berglunds snabbkop
|
Christina Berglund
|
Berguvsvagen 8
Lulea
|
0921-12 34 65
|
BLAUS
|
Blauer See Delikatessen
|
Hanna Moos
|
Forsterstr. 57
Mannheim
|
0621-08460
|
BLONP
|
Blondel pere et fils
|
Frederique Citeaux
|
24, place Kleber
Strasbourg
|
88.60.15.31
|
BOLID
|
Bolido Comidas preparadas
|
Martin Sommer
|
C/ Araquil, 67
Madrid
|
(91) 555 22 82
|
BONAP
|
Bon app'
|
Laurence Lebihan
|
12, rue des Bouchers
Marseille
|
91.24.45.40
|
BOTTM
|
Bottom-Dollar Markets
|
Elizabeth Lincoln
|
23 Tsawassen Blvd.
Tsawassen
|
(604) 555-4729
|
BSBEV
|
B's Beverages
|
Victoria Ashworth
|
Fauntleroy Circus
London
|
(171) 555-1212
|
CACTU
|
Cactus Comidas para llevar
|
Patricio Simpson
|
Cerrito 333
Buenos Aires
|
(1) 135-5555
|
18.2. AsciiDoc Table Block Elements
This sub-section details the AsciiDoc table format.
Table ::= (Ruler,Header?,Body,Footer?)
Header ::= (Row+,Underline)
Footer ::= (Row+,Underline)
Body ::= (Row+,Underline)
Row ::= (Data+)
A table is terminated when the table underline is followed by a blank
line or an end of file. Table underlines which separate table headers,
bodies and footers should not be followed by a blank line.
18.2.1. Ruler
The first line of the table is called the Ruler. The Ruler specifies
which configuration file table definition to use, column widths,
column alignments and the overall table width.
There are two ruler formats:
-
Character ruler
-
The column widths are determined by the number of table fill
characters between column stop characters.
-
Numeric ruler
-
The column widths are specified numerically. If a column width
is omitted the previous width is used. In the degenerate case
of no widths being specified columns are allocated equal
widths.
The ruler format can be summarized as:
ruler ::= ((colstop,(colwidth,fillchar+)?)+, fillchar+, tablewidth?
-
The ruler starts with a column stop character (designating the
start of the first column).
-
Column stop characters specify the start and alignment of each
column:
-
Backtick (`) — align left.
-
Single quote (') — align right.
-
Period (.) — align center.
-
In the case of fixed format tables the ruler column widths specify
source row data column boundaries.
-
The optional tablewidth is a number representing the size of the
output table relative to the pagewidth. If tablewidth is less
than one then it is interpreted as a fraction of the page width; if
it is greater than one then it is interpreted as a percentage of
the page width. If tablewidth is not specified then the table
occupies the full pagewidth (numeric rulers) or the relative width
of the ruler compared to the textwidth (character rulers).
18.2.2. Row and Data Elements
Each table row consists of a line of text containing the same number
of Data items as there are columns in the table,
Lines ending in a backslash character are continued on the next line.
Each Data item is an AsciiDoc substitutable string. The substitutions
performed are specified by the subs table definition entry. Data
cannot contain AsciiDoc block elements.
The format of the row is determined by the table definition format
value:
-
fixed
-
Row data items are assigned by chopping the row up at ruler column
width boundaries.
-
csv
-
Data items are assigned the parsed CSV (Comma Separated Values)
data.
-
dsv
-
The DSV (Delimiter Separated Values) format is a common UNIX tabular
text file format.
18.2.3. Underline
A table Underline consists of a line of three or more fillchar
characters which are end delimiters for table header, footer and body
sections.
18.2.4. Attribute List
The following optional table attributes can be specified in an
AttributeList preceding the table:
-
separator
-
The default DSV format colon separator can be changed using the
separator attribute. For example: [separator="|"].
-
frame
-
Defines the table border and can take the following values: topbot
(top and bottom), all (all sides), none and sides (left and
right sides). The default value is topbot.
-
grid
-
Defines which ruler lines are drawn between table rows and columns.
The grid attribute value can be any of the following values:
none, cols, rows and all. The default value is none. For
example [frame="all", grid="none"].
-
format, tablewidth
-
See Markup Attributes below.
You can also use an AttributeList to override the following table
definition and ruler parameters: format, subs, tablewidth.
18.2.5. Markup Attributes
The following attributes are automatically available inside table tag
and markup templates.
-
cols
-
The number of columns in the table.
-
colalign
-
Column alignment assumes one of three values (left, right or
center). The value is determined by the corresponding ruler column
stop character (only valid inside colspec, headdata, bodydata
and footdata tags).
-
colwidth
-
The output column widths are calculated integers (only valid inside
colspec, headdata, bodydata and footdata tags).
-
colnumber
-
The table column number starting at 1 (only valid inside colspec,
headdata, bodydata and footdata tags).
-
format
-
The table definition format value (can be overridden with
attribute list entry).
-
tablewidth
-
The ruler tablewidth value (can be overridden with attribute list
entry).
-
pagewidth
-
The pagewidth miscellaneous configuration option.
-
pageunits
-
The pageunits miscellaneous configuration option.
The colwidth value is calculated as (N is the ruler column width
number and M is the sum of the ruler column widths):
If the ruler tablewidth was specified the column width is multiplied
again by this value.
There is one exception: character rulers that have no pagewidth
specified. In this case the colwidth value is calculated as (where
N is the column character width measured on the table ruler):
( N / textwidth ) * pagewidth
The following attributes are available to the table markup template:
-
comspecs
-
Expands to N substituted comspec tags where N is the number of
columns.
-
headrows, footrows, bodyrows
-
These references expand to sets of substituted header, footer and
body rows as defined by the corresponding row and data configuration
parameters.
-
rows
-
Experimental attribute (number of source lines in table) available
in table markup templates (used by experimental LaTeX backend).
19. Manpage Documents
Sooner or later, if you program for a UNIX environment, you're going
to have to write a man page.
By observing a couple of additional conventions you can compose
AsciiDoc files that will translate to a DocBook refentry (man page)
document. The resulting DocBook file can then be translated to the
native roff man page format (or other formats).
For example, the asciidoc.1.txt file in the AsciiDoc distribution
./doc directory was used to generate both the
asciidoc.1.css-embedded.html HTML file the asciidoc.1 roff
formatted asciidoc(1) man page.
To find out more about man pages view the man(7) manpage
(man 7 man command).
19.1. Document Header
A document Header is mandatory. The title line contains the man page
name followed immediately by the manual section number in brackets,
for example ASCIIDOC(1). The title name should not contain white
space and the manual section number is a single digit optionally
followed by a single character.
19.2. The NAME Section
The first manpage section is mandatory, must be titled NAME and must
contain a single paragraph (usually a single line) consisting of a
list of one or more comma separated command name(s) separated from the
command purpose by a dash character. The dash must have at least one
white space character on either side. For example:
printf, fprintf, sprintf - print formatted output
19.3. The SYNOPSIS Section
The second manpage section is mandatory and must be titled SYNOPSIS.
20. Configuration Files
AsciiDoc source file syntax and output file markup is largely
controlled by a set of cascading, text based, configuration files. At
runtime The AsciiDoc default configuration files are combined with
optional user and document specific configuration files.
20.1. Configuration File Format
Configuration files contain named sections. Each section begins with a
section name in square brackets []. The section body consists of the
lines of text between adjacent section headings.
-
Section names consist of one or more alphanumeric, underscore or
dash characters and cannot begin or end with a dash.
-
Lines starting with a hash character "#" are treated as comments and
ignored.
-
Same named sections and section entries override previously loaded
sections and section entries (this is sometimes referred to as
cascading). Consequently, downstream configuration files need
only contain those sections and section entries that need to be
overridden.
Tip
|
When creating custom configuration files you only need to include
the sections and entries that differ from the default configuration. |
Tip
|
The best way to learn about configuration files is to read the
default configuration files in the AsciiDoc distribution in
conjunction with asciidoc(1) output files. You can view configuration
file load sequence by turning on the asciidoc(1) -v (—verbose)
command-line option. |
20.2. Markup Template Sections
Markup template sections supply backend markup for translating
AsciiDoc elements. Since the text is normally backend dependent
you'll find these sections in the backend specific configuration
files. A markup template section body can contain:
The document content placeholder is a single | character and is
replaced by text from the source element. Use the {brvbar}
attribute reference if you need a literal | character in the template.
20.3. Special Sections
AsciiDoc reserves the following predefined special section names for
specific purposes:
-
miscellaneous
-
Configuration options that don't belong anywhere else.
-
attributes
-
Attribute name/value entries.
-
specialcharacters
-
Special characters reserved by the backend markup.
-
tags
-
Backend markup tags.
-
quotes
-
Definitions for quoted inline character formatting.
-
specialwords
-
Lists of words and phrases singled out for special markup.
-
replacements, replacements2
-
Find and replace substitution definitions.
-
specialsections
-
Used to single out special section names for specific markup.
-
macros
-
Macro syntax definitions.
titles:
Heading, section and block title definitions.
-
paradef*
-
Paragraph element definitions.
-
blockdef*
-
DelimitedBlock element definitions.
-
listdef*
-
List element definitions.
-
tabledef*
-
Table element definitions.
Each line of text in a special section is a section entry. Section
entries share the following syntax:
-
name=value
-
The entry value is set to value.
-
name=
-
The entry value is set to a zero length string.
-
name
-
The entry is undefined (deleted from the configuration).
Section entry behavior
-
All equals characters inside the name must be escaped with a
backslash character. If you want the name to end in a backslash
then you need to place two backslashes at the end of the name.
-
name and value are stripped of leading and trailing white space.
-
Attribute names, tag entry names and markup template section names
consist of one or more alphanumeric, underscore or dash characters.
Names should not begin or end with a dash.
-
A blank configuration file section (one without any entries) deletes
any preceding section with the same name (applies to non-markup
template sections).
20.3.1. Miscellaneous
The optional [miscellaneous] section specifies the following
name=value options:
-
newline
-
Output file line termination characters. Can include any
valid Python string escape sequences. The default value is
\r\n (carriage return, line feed). Should not be quoted or
contain explicit spaces (use \x20 instead). For example:
$ asciidoc -a 'newline=\n' -b docbook mydoc.txt
-
outfilesuffix
-
The default extension for the output file, for example
outfilesuffix=.html. Defaults to backend name.
-
tabsize
-
The number of spaces to expand tab characters, for example
tabsize=4. Defaults to 8. A tabsize of zero suppresses tab
expansion (useful when piping included files through block
filters). Included files can override this option using the
tabsize attribute.
-
textwidth, pagewidth, pageunits
-
These global table related options are documented in the
Table Configuration File Definitions sub-section.
Note
|
[miscellaneous] configuration file entries can be set using
the asciidoc(1) -a (—attribute) command-line option. |
20.3.2. Titles
-
sectiontitle
-
Two line section title pattern. The entry value is a Python
regular expression containing the named group title.
-
underlines
-
A comma separated list of document and section title underline
character pairs starting with the section level 0 and ending
with section level 4 underline. The default setting is:
underlines="==","--","~~","^^","++"
-
sect0…sect4
-
One line section title patterns. The entry value is a Python
regular expression containing the named group title.
-
blocktitle
-
BlockTitle element pattern. The entry value is a
Python regular expression containing the named group title.
-
subs
-
A comma separated list of substitutions that are performed on
the document header and section titles. Defaults to normal
substitution.
20.3.3. Tags
The [tags] section contains backend tag definitions (one per
line). Tags are used to translate AsciiDoc elements to backend
markup.
An AsciiDoc tag definition is formatted like
<tagname>=<starttag>|<endtag>. For example:
In this example asciidoc(1) replaces the | character with the
emphasized text from the AsciiDoc input file and writes the result to
the output file.
Use the {brvbar} attribute reference if you need to include a | pipe
character inside tag text.
20.3.4. Attributes Section
The optional [attributes] section contains predefined attributes.
If the attribute value requires leading or trailing spaces then the
text text should be enclosed in double-quote (") characters.
To delete a attribute insert a name only entry in a downstream
configuration file or use the asciidoc(1) —attribute=name!
command-line option (the attribute name is suffixed with a ! character
to delete it).
20.3.5. Special Characters
The [specialcharacters] section specifies how to escape characters
reserved by the backend markup. Each translation is specified on a
single line formatted like:
special_character=translated_characters
Special characters are normally confined to those that resolve
markup ambiguity (in the case of SGML/XML markups the ampersand, less
than and greater than characters). The following example causes all
occurrences of the < character to be replaced by <.
20.3.6. Quoted Text
Quoting is used primarily for text formatting. The [quotes] section
defines AsciiDoc quoting characters and their corresponding backend
markup tags. Each section entry value is the name of a of a [tags]
section entry. The entry name is the character (or characters) that
quote the text. The following examples are taken from AsciiDoc
configuration files:
[tags]
emphasis=<em>|</em>
You can specify the left and right quote strings separately by
separating them with a | character, for example:
If you set the tag to none then a blank string will be substituted
for the quoted text which has the effect of dropping the quoted text
from the output document.
Unconstrained quotes are differentiated by prefixing the tag
name with a hash character, for example:
Quoted text behavior
20.3.7. Special Words
The [specialwords] section is used to single out words and phrases
that you want to consistently format in some way throughout your
document without having to repeatedly specify the markup. The name of
each entry corresponds to a markup template section and the entry
value consists of a list of words and phrases to be marked up. For
example:
[specialwords]
strongwords=NOTE: IMPORTANT:
[strongwords]
<strong>{words}</strong>
The examples specifies that any occurrence of NOTE: or IMPORTANT:
should appear in a bold font.
Words and word phrases are treated as Python regular expressions: for
example, the word ^NOTE: would only match NOTE: if appeared at
the start of a line.
AsciiDoc comes with three built-in Special Word types:
emphasizedwords, monospacedwords and strongwords, each has a
corresponding (backend specific) markup template section. Edit the
configuration files to customize existing Special Words and to add new
ones.
Special word behavior
-
Word list entries must be separated by space characters.
-
Word list entries with embedded spaces should be enclosed in quotation (")
characters.
-
A [specialwords] section entry of the form
name=word1 [word2…] adds words to existing name entries.
-
A [specialwords] section entry of the form name undefines
(deletes) all existing name words.
-
Since word list entries are processed as Python regular expressions
you need to be careful to escape regular expression special
characters.
-
By default Special Words are substituted before Inline Macros, this
may lead to undesirable consequences. For example the special word
foobar would be expanded inside the macro call
http://www.foobar.com[]. A possible solution is to emphasize
whole words only by defining the word using regular expression
characters, for example \bfoobar\b.
-
If the first matched character of a special word is a backslash then
the remaining characters are output without markup i.e. the
backslash can be used to escape special word markup. For example
the special word \\?\b[Tt]en\b will mark up the words Ten and
ten only if they are not preceded by a backslash.
20.3.8. Replacements
[replacements] and [replacements2] configuration file entries
specify find and replace text and are formatted like:
find_pattern=replacement_text
The find text can be a Python regular expression; the replace text can
contain Python regular expression group references.
Use Replacement shortcuts for often used macro references, for
example (the second replacement allows us to backslash escape the
macro name):
NEW!=image:./images/smallnew.png[New!]
\\NEW!=NEW!
Replacement behavior
-
The built-in replacements can be escaped with a backslash.
-
If the find or replace text has leading or trailing spaces then the
text should be enclosed in quotation (") characters.
-
Since the find text is processed as a regular expression you need to
be careful to escape regular expression special characters.
-
Replacements are performed in the same order they appear in the
configuration file replacements section.
20.4. Configuration File Names and Locations
Configuration files have a .conf file name extension; they are
loaded implicitly (using predefined file names and locations) or
explicitly (using the asciidoc(1) -f (—conf-file) command-line
option).
Implicit configuration files are loaded from the following directories
in the following order:
-
The /etc/asciidoc directory (if it exists).
-
The directory containing the asciidoc executable.
-
The user's $HOME/.asciidoc directory (if it exists).
-
The directory containing the AsciiDoc source file.
The following implicit configuration files from each of the above
locations are loaded in the following order:
-
asciidoc.conf
-
<backend>.conf
-
<backend>-<doctype>.conf
Where <backend> and <doctype> are values specified by the
asciidoc(1) -b (—backend) and -d (—doctype) command-line
options.
Finally, configuration files named like the source file will be
automatically loaded if they are found in the source file directory.
For example if the source file is mydoc.txt and the
—backend=html4 option is used then asciidoc(1) will look for
mydoc.conf and mydoc-html4.conf in that order.
Implicit configuration files that don't exist will be silently
skipped.
The user can explicitly specify additional configuration files using
the asciidoc(1) -f (—conf-file) command-line option. The -f
option can be specified multiple times, in which case configuration
files will be processed in the order they appear on the command-line.
For example, when we translate our AsciiDoc document mydoc.txt with:
$ asciidoc -f extra.conf mydoc.txt
Configuration files (if they exist) will be processed in the following
order:
-
First default global configuration files from the asciidoc program
directory are loaded:
asciidoc.conf
xhtml11.conf
-
Then, from the users home ~/.asciidoc directory. This is were
you put customization specific to your own asciidoc documents:
asciidoc.conf
xhtml11.conf
xhtml11-article.conf
-
Next from the source document project directory (the first three
apply to all documents in the directory, the last two are specific
to the mydoc.txt document):
asciidoc.conf
xhtml11.conf
xhtml11-article.conf
mydoc.conf
mydoc-xhtml11.conf
-
Finally the file specified by the -f command-line option is
loaded:
Tip
|
Use the asciidoc(1) -v (—verbose) command-line option to see
which configuration files are loaded and the order in which they are
loaded. |
21. Document Attributes
A document attribute is comprised of a name and a textual value
and is used for textual substitution in AsciiDoc documents and
configuration files. An attribute reference (an attribute name
enclosed in braces) is replaced by it's their corresponding attribute
value.
There are four sources of document attributes (from highest to lowest
precedence):
-
Command-line attributes.
-
AttributeEntry, AttributeList, Macro and BlockId elements.
-
Configuration file [attributes] sections.
-
Intrinsic attributes.
Within each of these divisions the last processed entry takes
precedence.
Important
|
If an attribute is not defined then the line containing the
attribute reference is dropped. This property is used extensively in
AsciiDoc configuration files to facilitate conditional markup
generation. |
22. Attribute Entries
The AttributeEntry block element allows document attributes to be
assigned within an AsciiDoc document. Attribute entries are added to
the global document attributes dictionary. The attribute name/value
syntax is a single line like:
For example:
This will set an attribute reference {authorinitials} to the value
JB in the current document.
To delete (undefine) an attribute use the following syntax:
AttributeEntry properties
-
The attribute entry line begins with colon — no white space allowed
in left margin.
-
AsciiDoc converts the <name> to a legal attribute name (lower
case, alphanumeric and dash characters only — all other characters
deleted). This allows more reader friendly text to be used.
-
Leading and trailing white space is stripped from the <value>.
-
If the <value> is blank then the corresponding attribute value is
set to an empty string.
-
Special characters in the entry <value> are substituted. To
included special characters use {gt}, {lt}, {amp} attribute
references.
-
Attribute references contained in the entry <value> will be
expanded.
-
By default AttributeEntry values are substituted for
specialcharacters and attributes (see above), if you want a
different AttributeEntry substitution set the attributeentry-subs
attribute.
-
Attribute entries in the document Header are available for header
markup template substitution.
-
Attribute elements override configuration file and intrinsic
attributes but do not override command-line attributes.
Note
|
The author attribute as a special case, it also sets the
firstname, surname, middlename and authorinitials attributes. |
Here's another example:
AsciiDoc User Manual
====================
:Author: Stuart Rackham
:Email: srackham@methods.co.nz
:Date: April 23, 2004
:Revision: 5.1.1
:Key words: linux, ralink, debian, wireless
:Revision history:
Which creates these attributes:
{author}, {firstname}, {surname}, {authorinitials}, {email},
{date}, {revision}, {keywords}, {revisionhistory}
The preceding example is equivalent to the standard AsciiDoc two line
document header. Actually it's a little bit different with the
addition of the {keywords} and {revisionhistory} attributes
[The existence of a {revisionhistory} attribute causes a
revision history file (if it exists) to be included in DocBook
outputs. If a file named like {docname}-revhistory.xml exists in
the document's directory then it will be added verbatim to the DocBook
header (see the ./doc/asciidoc-revhistory.xml example that comes
with the AsciiDoc distribution).]
.
23. Attribute Lists
An attribute list is a comma separated list of attribute values. The
entire list is enclosed in square brackets. Attribute lists are used
to pass parameters to macros, blocks and inline quotes.
The list consists of zero or more positional attribute values followed
by zero or more named attribute values. Here are three examples:
[Hello]
[Bertrand Russell, The World of Mathematics (1956)]
["22 times", backcolor="#0e0e0e", options="noborders,wide"]
Attribute list properties
-
List attributes take precedence over existing attributes.
-
List attributes can only be referenced in configuration file markup
templates and tags, they are not available inside the document.
-
Attribute references are allowed inside attribute lists.
-
If the list contains any named attributes the all string attribute
values must be quoted.
-
Quoted named attribute values have the same syntax and semantics as
Python string literals.
-
Setting a named attribute to None undefines the attribute.
-
Positional attributes are referred to as {1},{2},{3},…
-
Attribute {0} refers to the entire list (excluding the enclosing
square brackets).
-
If an attribute named options is present it is processed as a
comma separated list of attributes with zero length string values.
For example [options="opt1,opt2,opt3"] is equivalent to
[opt1="",opt2="",opt2=""].
23.1. Macro Attribute lists
Macros calls are suffixed with an attribute list. The list may be
empty but it cannot be omitted. List entries are used to pass
attribute values to macro markup templates.
23.2. AttributeList Element
An attribute list on a line by itself constitutes an AttributeList
block element, it's function is to parameterize the following block
element. The list attributes are passed to the next block element for
markup template substitution.
24. Attribute References
An attribute references is an attribute name (possibly followed by an
additional parameters) enclosed in braces. When an attribute
reference is encountered it is evaluated and replaced by its
corresponding text value. If the attribute is undefined the line
containing the attribute is dropped.
There are three types of attribute reference: Simple, Conditional
and System.
Attribute reference behavior
-
You can suppress attribute reference expansion by placing a
backslash character immediately in front of the opening brace
character.
-
By default attribute references are not expanded in
LiteralParagraphs, ListingBlocks or LiteralBlocks.
24.1. Simple Attributes References
Simple attribute references take the form {<name>}. If the
attribute name is defined its text value is substituted otherwise the
line containing the reference is dropped from the output.
24.2. Conditional Attribute References
Additional parameters are used in conjunction with the attribute name
to calculate a substitution value. Conditional attribute references
take the following forms:
-
{<name>=<value>}
-
<value> is substituted if the attribute <name> undefined
otherwise it's value is substituted. <value> can contain
simple attribute references.
-
{<name>?<value>}
-
<value> is substituted if the attribute <name> is defined
otherwise an empty string is substituted. <value> can
contain simple attribute references.
-
{<name>!<value>}
-
<value> is substituted if the attribute <name> is
undefined otherwise an empty string is substituted. <value>
can contain simple attribute references.
-
{<name>#<value>}
-
<value> is substituted if the attribute <name> is defined
otherwise the undefined attribute entry causes the containing
line to be dropped. <value> can contain simple attribute
references.
-
{<name>%<value>}
-
<value> is substituted if the attribute <name> is not
defined otherwise the containing line is dropped. <value>
can contain simple attribute references.
-
{<name>@<regexp>:<value1>[:<value2>]}
-
<value1> is substituted if the value of attribute <name>
matches the regular expression <regexp> otherwise <value2>
is substituted. If attribute <name> is not defined the
containing line is dropped. If <value2> is omitted an empty
string is assumed. The values and the regular expression can
contain simple attribute references. To embed colons in the
values or the regular expression escape them with backslashes.
-
{<name>$<regexp>:<value1>[:<value2>]}
-
Same behaviour as the previous ternary attribute except for
the following cases:
-
{<name>$<regexp>:<value>}
-
Substitutes <value> if <name> matches <regexp>
otherwise the result is undefined and the containing
line is dropped.
-
{<name>$<regexp>::<value>}
-
Substitutes <value> if <name> does not match
<regexp> otherwise the result is undefined and the
containing line is dropped.
24.2.1. Conditional attribute examples
Conditional attributes are mainly used in AsciiDoc configuration
files — see the distribution .conf files for examples.
-
Attribute equality test
-
If {backend} is docbook or xhtml11 the example evaluates to
“DocBook or XHTML backend” otherwise it evaluates to “some other
backend”:
{backend@docbook|xhtml11:DocBook or XHTML backend:some other backend}
-
Attribute value map
-
This example maps the frame attribute values [topbot, all,
none, sides] to [hsides, border, void, vsides]:
{frame@topbot:hsides}{frame@all:border}{frame@none:void}{frame@sides:vsides}
24.3. System Attribute References
System attribute references generate the attribute text value by
executing a predefined action that is parameterized by a single
argument. The syntax is {<action>:<argument>}.
-
{eval:<expression>}
-
Substitutes the result of the Python <expression>. If
<expression> evaluates to None or False the reference is
deemed undefined and the line containing the reference is
dropped from the output. If the expression evaluates to
True the attribute evaluates to an empty string. In all
remaining cases the attribute evaluates to a string
representation of the <expression> result.
-
{include:<filename>}
-
Substitutes contents of the file named <filename>.
-
The included file is read at the time of attribute
substitution.
-
If the file does not exist a warning is emitted and the line
containing the reference is dropped from the output file.
-
Tabs are expanded based on the current tabsize.
-
{sys:<command>}
-
Substitutes the stdout generated by the execution of the shell
<command>.
-
{sys2:<command>}
-
Substitutes the stdout and stderr generated by the execution
of the shell <command>.
System reference behavior
25. Intrinsic Attributes
Intrinsic attributes are simple attributes that are created
automatically from document header parameters, asciidoc(1)
command-line arguments, environment parameters along with attributes
defined in the default configuration files. Here's the list of
predefined intrinsic attributes:
{asciidoc-version} the version of asciidoc(1)
{asciidoc-dir} the asciidoc(1) application directory
{user-dir} the ~/.asciidoc directory (if it exists)
{authorinitials} author initials (from document header)
{author} author's full name ({firstname} {middlename}
{lastname})
{authored} empty string '' if {author} or {email} defined,
otherwise undefined.
{date} document date (from document header)
{doctitle} document title (from document header)
{email} author's email address (from document header)
{firstname} author first name (from document header)
{lastname} author last name (from document header)
{localdate} the current date
{localtime} the current time
{manname} manpage name (defined in NAME section)
{manpurpose} manpage (defined in NAME section)
{mantitle} document title minus the manpage volume number
{manvolnum} manpage volume number (1..8) (from document header)
{middlename} author middle name (from document header)
{revision} document revision number (from document header)
{title} section title (defined titled element substitution
sections)
{sectnum} section number (defined in section titles
markup template sections)
{amp} ampersand (&) character
{lt} less than (<) character
{gt} greater than (>) character
{brvbar} broken vertical bar (|) character
{empty} empty string ''
{infile} input file name
{outfile} output file name
{docdir} document directory name (no trailing separator)
{docname} document file name without extension
{doctype} document type specified by `-d` option
{filetype} output file name file extension
{backend} document backend specified by `-b` option
{backend-<backend>} empty string ''
{<backend>-<doctype>} empty string ''
{doctype-<doctype>} empty string ''
{filetype-<fileext>} empty string ''
{basebackend} html or docbook
{basebackend-<base>} empty string ''
Note
|
See also the xhtml11 subsection for attributes that
relate to AsciiDoc XHTML file generation. |
The entries that translate to blank strings are designed to be used
for conditional text inclusion. You can also use the ifdef, ifndef
and endif System macros for conditional inclusion.
[Conditional inclusion using ifdef and ifndef macros
differs from attribute conditional inclusion in that the former occurs
when the file is read while the latter occurs when the contents are
written.]
26. Block Element Definitions
The syntax and behavior of Paragraph, DelimitedBlock, List and Table
block elements is determined by block definitions contained in
AsciiDoc configuration file sections.
Each definition consists of a section title followed by one or more
section entries. Each entry defines a block parameter controlling some
aspect of the block's behavior. Here's an example:
[blockdef-listing]
delimiter=^-{4,}$
template=listingblock
presubs=specialcharacters,callouts
AsciiDoc Paragraph, DelimitedBlock, List and Table block elements
share a common subset of configuration file parameters:
-
delimiter
-
A Python regular expression that matches the first line of a block
element — in the case of DelimitedBlocks it also matches the last
line. Table elements don't have an explicit delimiter — they
synthesize their delimiters at runtime.
-
template
-
The name of the configuration file markup template section that will
envelope the block contents. The pipe | character is substituted for
the block contents. List elements use a set of (list specific) tag
parameters instead of a single template.
-
options
-
A comma delimited list of element specific option names.
-
subs, presubs, postsubs
-
-
presubs and postsubs are lists of comma separated substitutions that are
performed on the block contents. presubs is applied first,
postsubs (if specified) second.
-
subs is an alias for presubs.
-
If a filter is allowed (Paragraphs and DelimitedBlocks) and has
been specified then presubs and postsubs substitutions are
performed before and after the filter is run respectively.
-
Allowed values: specialcharacters, quotes, specialwords,
replacements, macros, attributes, callouts.
-
The following composite values are also allowed:
-
none
-
No substitutions.
-
normal
-
The following substitutions:
specialcharacters,quotes,attributes,specialwords,
replacements,macros,passthroughs.
-
verbatim
-
specialcharacters and callouts substitutions.
-
normal and verbatim substitutions can be redefined by with
subsnormal and subsverbatim entries in a configuration file
[misc] section.
-
The substitutions are processed in the order in which they are
listed and can appear more than once.
-
filter
-
This optional entry specifies an executable shell command for
processing block content (Paragraphs and DelimitedBlocks). The
filter command can contain attribute references.
-
posattrs
-
Optional comma separated list of positional attribute names. This
list maps positional attributes (in the block's attribute list) to named block attributes. The following example, from the
QuoteBlock definition, maps the first and section positional
attributes:
posattrs=attribution,citetitle
-
style
-
This optional parameter specifies the default style name.
-
<stylename>-style
-
Optional style definition (see Styles below).
The following block parameters behave like document attributes and can
be set in block attribute lists and style definitions: template,
options, subs, presubs, postsubs, filter.
26.1. Styles
A style is a set of block attributes bundled as a single named
attribute. The following example defines a style named verbatim:
verbatim-style=template="literalblock",subs="verbatim",font="monospaced"
All style parameter names must be suffixed with -style and the style
parameter value is in the form of a list of named attributes.
26.2. Paragraphs
Paragraph translation is controlled by [paradef*] configuration file
section entries. Users can define new types of paragraphs and modify
the behavior of existing types by editing AsciiDoc configuration
files.
Here is the shipped Default paragraph definition:
[paradef-default]
delimiter=(?P<text>\S.*)
template=paragraph
The Default paragraph definition has a couple of special properties:
-
It must exist and be defined in a configuration file section named
[paradef-default].
-
Irrespective of its position in the configuration files default
paragraph document matches are attempted only after trying all
other paragraph types.
Paragraph specific block parameter notes:
-
delimiter
-
This regular expression must contain the named group text which
matches the text on the first line. Paragraphs are terminated by a
blank line, the end of file, or the start of a DelimitedBlock.
-
options
-
The only allowable option is listelement. The listelement
option specifies that paragraphs of this type will automatically be
considered part of immediately preceding list items.
Paragraph processing proceeds as follows:
-
The paragraph text is aligned to the left margin.
-
Optional presubs inline substitutions are performed on the
paragraph text.
-
If a filter command is specified it is executed and the paragraph
text piped to it's standard input; the filter output replaces the
paragraph text.
-
Optional postsubs inline substitutions are performed on the
paragraph text.
-
The paragraph text is enveloped by the paragraph's markup template
and written to the output file.
26.3. Delimited Blocks
DelimitedBlock specific block definition notes:
-
options
-
Allowed values are:
-
sectionbody
-
The block contents are processed as a SectionBody.
-
skip
-
The block is treated as a comment (see CommentBlocks).
-
list
-
The block is a list block.
presubs, postsubs and filter entries are meaningless when
sectionbody, skip or list options are set.
DelimitedBlock processing proceeds as follows:
-
Optional presubs substitutions are performed on the block
contents.
-
If a filter is specified it is executed and the block's contents
piped to its standard input. The filter output replaces the block
contents.
-
Optional postsubs substitutions are performed on the block
contents.
-
The block contents is enveloped by the block's markup template and
written to the output file.
Tip
|
Attribute expansion is performed on the block filter command
before it is executed, this is useful for passing arguments to the
filter. |
26.4. Lists
List behavior and syntax is determined by [listdef*] configuration
file sections. The user can change existing list behavior and add new
list types by editing configuration files.
List specific block definition notes:
-
type
-
This is either bulleted,numbered,labeled or callout.
-
delimiter
-
A Python regular expression that matches the first line of a
list element entry. This expression must contain the named
group text which matches text in the first line.
-
subs
-
Substitutions that are performed on list item text and terms.
-
listtag
-
The name of the tag that envelopes the List.
-
itemtag
-
The name of the tag that envelopes the ListItem.
-
texttag
-
The name of the tag that envelopes the list item text.
-
labeltag
-
The name of the tag that envelopes a variable list label.
-
entrytag
-
The name of the tag that envelopes a labeled list entry.
The tag entries map the AsciiDoc list structure to backend markup; see
the AsciiDoc distribution .conf configuration files for examples.
26.5. Tables
Table behavior and syntax is determined by [tabledef*] configuration
file sections. The user can change existing list behavior and add new
list types by editing configuration files.
Table specific block definition notes:
-
fillchar
-
A single character that fills table ruler and underline
lines.
-
subs
-
Substitutions performed on table data items.
-
format
-
The source row data format (fixed, csv or dsv).
-
comspec
-
The table comspec tag definition.
-
headrow, footrow, bodyrow
-
Table header, footer and body row tag definitions. headrow and
footrow table definition entries default to bodyrow if
they are undefined.
-
headdata, footdata, bodydata
-
Table header, footer and body data tag definitions. headdata and
footdata table definition entries default to bodydata if they
are undefined.
Table behaviour is also influenced by the following [miscellaneous]
configuration file entries:
-
textwidth
-
The page width (in characters) of the source text. This setting is
compared to the the table ruler width when calculating the relative
size of character ruler tables on the output page.
-
pagewidth
-
This integer value is the printable width of the output media. Used
to calculate colwidth and tablewidth substitution values.
-
pageunits
-
The units of width in output markup width attribute values.
Table definition behavior
-
The output markup generation is specifically designed to work with
the HTML and CALS (DocBook) table models, but should be adaptable to
most XML table schema.
-
Table definitions can be “mixed in” from multiple cascading
configuration files.
-
New table definitions inherit the default table definition
([tabledef-default]) so you only need to override those conf file
entries that require modification when defining a new table type.
27. Filters
Filters are external shell commands used to process Paragraph and
DelimitedBlock content; they are specified in configuration file
Paragraph and DelimitedBlock definitions.
There's nothing special about the filters, they're just standard UNIX
filters: they read text from the standard input, process it, and write
it to the standard output.
Attribute substitution is performed on the filter command prior to
execution — attributes can be used to pass parameters from the
AsciiDoc source document to the filter.
Warning
|
Filters can potentially generate unsafe output. Before
installing a filter you should verify that it can't be coerced into
generating malicious output or exposing sensitive information. |
Note
|
Filter functionality is currently only available on POSIX
platforms (this includes Cygwin). |
27.1. Filter Search Paths
If the filter command does not specify a directory path then
asciidoc(1) searches for the command:
-
First it looks in the user's $HOME/.asciidoc/filters directory.
-
Next the /etc/asciidoc/filters directory is searched.
-
Then it looks in the asciidoc(1) ./filters directory.
-
Finally it relies on the executing shell to search the environment
search path ($PATH).
27.2. Filter Configuration Files
Since filters are normally accompanied by a configuration file
containing an example filter Paragraph or filter DelimitedBlock
definition.
asciidoc(1) auto-loads all .conf files found in the user's
$HOME/.asciidoc/filters directory and the asciidoc(1) ./filters
subdirectory.
27.3. Code Filter
AsciiDoc comes with a simple minded code-filter for highlighting
source code keywords and comments. You'll find this example in the
AsciiDoc distribution ./filters subdirectory (read the
./filters/code-filter-readme.txt file for instructions).
The following example highlights Python keywords in the block's
content:
.Code filter example
[python]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
''' A multi-line
comment.'''
def sub_word(mo):
''' Single line comment.'''
word = mo.group('word') # Inline comment
if word in keywords[language]:
return quote + word + quote
else:
return word
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Outputs:
Example: Code filter example
''' A multi-line
comment.'''
def sub_word(mo):
''' Single line comment.'''
word = mo.group('word') # Inline comment
if word in keywords[language]:
return quote + word + quote
else:
return word
Note
|
A full featured source code highlighter filter
(source-highlight-filter.conf) using
GNU
source-highlight can be found in the AsciiDoc distribution
./examples/source-highlight-filter directory. GNU source-highlight
generates nicely formatted source code for most common programming
languages. |
28. Converting DocBook to other file formats
DocBook files are validated, parsed and translated by a combination of
applications collectively called a DocBook tool chain. The function
of a tool chain is to read the DocBook markup (produced by AsciiDoc)
and transform it to a presentation format (for example HTML, PDF, HTML
Help).
A wide range of user output format requirements coupled with a choice
of available tools and stylesheets results in many valid tool chain
combinations.
The DocBook toolchain currently used for processing AsciiDoc
documentation is xsltproc(1), FOP and DocBook XSL Stylesheets. These tools are freely available for Linux and
Windows systems.
If you require indexes, tables of contents or output formats other
than HTML you would feed AsciiDoc's DocBook output to a DocBook
toolchain. The distributed AsciiDoc User Guide plus the article and
book example documents have been generated in this way.
The toolchain processing steps are:
-
Convert AsciiDoc (*.txt) documents to DocBook XML (*.xml)
using AsciiDoc.
-
Convert DocBook XML documents to HTML, XSL-FO or HTML Help files
using DocBook XSL Stylesheets and the xsltproc(1) XML
parser.
-
Convert the XSL-FO (*.fo) files to PDF using FOP and HTML Help
source (*.hhp) files to HTML Help (*.chm) files using the
Microsoft HTML Help Compiler.
Tip
|
These steps can be automated by using the AsciiDoc a2x(1)
toolchain wrapper command. |
28.1. a2x Toolchain Wrapper
One of the biggest hurdles for new users seems to be using a DocBook
XML toolchain. a2x(1) can help — it's toolchain wrapper command that
will generate XHTML (chunked and unchunked), PDF, man page, HTML Help
and text file outputs from an AsciiDoc text file. a2x(1) does all the
grunt work associated with generating and sequencing the toolchain
commands and managing intermediate and output files. a2x(1) also
optionally deploys admonition and navigation icons and a CSS
stylesheet. See the a2x(1) man page for more details. All you need
is xsltproc(1), DocBook XSL Stylesheets and optionally
FOP (if you want PDF) or lynx(1) (if you want text).
The following example generates doc/quickstart.pdf from the AsciiDoc
doc/quickstart.txt source file:
$ a2x -f pdf --icons doc/quickstart.txt
See the a2x(1) man page for details.
Tip
|
Use the —verbose command-line option to view executed
toolchain commands. |
28.2. Toolchain Components
-
AsciiDoc
-
Converts AsciiDoc (*.txt) files to DocBook XML (*.xml) files.
-
DocBook XSL Stylesheets
-
These are a set of XSL stylesheets containing rules for converting
DocBook XML documents to HTML, XSL-FO, manpage and HTML Help
files. The stylesheets are used in conjunction with an XML parser
such as xsltproc(1).
-
xsltproc
-
xsltproc is a command line XML parser for applying XSLT
stylesheets (in our case the DocBook XSL Stylesheets) to XML
documents.
-
FOP
-
The Apache Formatting Objects Processor converts XSL-FO (*.fo)
files to PDF files (see the FOP section).
-
Microsoft Help Compiler
-
The Microsoft HTML Help Compiler (hhc.exe) is a command-line
tool that converts HTML Help source files to a single HTML Help
(*.chm) file. It runs on MS Windows platforms and can be
downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com.
28.3. AsciiDoc DocBook XSL Drivers
You will have noticed that the distributed PDF, HTML and HTML Help
documentation files (for example ./doc/asciidoc.html) are not the
plain outputs produced using the default DocBook XSL Stylesheets
configuration. This is because they have been processed using
customized DocBook XSL Stylesheet drivers along with (in the case of
HTML outputs) the custom ./stylesheets/docbook.css CSS stylesheet.
You'll find the customized DocBook XSL drivers along with additional
documentation in the distribution ./docbook-xsl directory. The
examples that follow are executed from the distribution documentation
(./doc) directory.
-
common.xsl
-
Shared driver parameters. This file is not used directly but is
included in all the following drivers.
-
chunked.xsl
-
Generate chunked XHTML (separate HTML pages for each document
section) in the ./doc/chunked directory. For example:
$ python ../asciidoc.py -b docbook asciidoc.txt
$ xsltproc --nonet ../docbook-xsl/chunked.xsl asciidoc.xml
-
fo.xsl
-
Generate XSL Formatting Object (*.fo) files for subsequent PDF
file generation using FOP. For example:
$ python ../asciidoc.py -b docbook article.txt
$ xsltproc --nonet ../docbook-xsl/fo.xsl article.xml > article.fo
$ fop.sh article.fo article.pdf
-
htmlhelp.xsl
-
Generate Microsoft HTML Help source files for the MS HTML Help
Compiler in the ./doc/htmlhelp directory. This example is run on
MS Windows from a Cygwin shell prompt:
$ python ../asciidoc.py -b docbook asciidoc.txt
$ xsltproc --nonet ../docbook-xsl/htmlhelp.xsl asciidoc.xml
$ c:/Program\ Files/HTML\ Help\ Workshop/hhc.exe htmlhelp.hhp
$ mv htmlhelp.chm asciidoc.chm
-
manpage.xsl
-
Generate a roff(1) format UNIX man page from a DocBook XML
refentry document. This example generates an asciidoc.1 man
page file:
$ python ../asciidoc.py -d manpage -b docbook asciidoc.1.txt
$ xsltproc --nonet ../docbook-xsl/manpage.xsl asciidoc.1.xml
-
xhtml.xsl
-
Convert a DocBook XML file to a single XHTML file. For example:
$ python ../asciidoc.py -b docbook asciidoc.txt
$ xsltproc --nonet ../docbook-xsl/xhtml.xsl asciidoc.xml > asciidoc.html
If you want to see how the complete documentation set is processed
take a look at the A-A-P script ./doc/main.aap.
28.4. FOP
XSL Stylesheets can be used to generate FO (Formatting Object) files,
which in turn can be used to produce PDF files using the Apache
Formatting Object Processor program (FOP). The FOP home page is at
http://xml.apache.org/fop/.
As of version 0.20.5 installation and configuration of FOP is a manual
process. You also need a working Java Runtime to run FOP. You'll find
FOP and Java installation information in the appendices.
Tip
|
Once you've got FOP installed use the AsciiDoc a2x(1) toolchain
wrapper to generate PDF files from AsciiDoc source. |
29. Generating Plain Text Files
AsciiDoc does not have a text backend (for most purposes AsciiDoc
source text is fine), however you can convert AsciiDoc text files to
formatted text using the AsciiDoc a2x(1) toolchain wrapper
utility.
30. XML and Character Sets
The default XML character set UTF-8 is used when AsciiDoc generates
DocBook files but this can be changed by setting the xmldecl entry
in the [attributes] section of the docbook.conf file or by
composing your own configuration file [header] section).
Tip
|
If you get an undefined entity error when processing DocBook
files you'll may find that you've used an undefined HTML character
entity. An easy (although inelegant) fix is to use the character's
character code instead of it's symbolic name (for example use  
instead of ). |
If your system has been configured with an XML catalog you may find a
number of entity sets are already automatically included.
30.1. PDF Fonts
The Adobe PDF Specification states that the following 14 fonts should
be available to every PDF reader: Helvetica (normal, bold, italic,
bold italic), Times (normal, bold, italic, bold italic), Courier
(normal, bold, italic, bold italic), Symbol and ZapfDingbats.
Non-standard fonts should be embedded in the distributed document.
31. Help Commands
The asciidoc(1) command has a --help option which prints help topics
to stdout. The default topic summarizes asciidoc(1) usage:
To print a list of help topics:
To print a help topic specify the topic name as a command argument.
Examples:
$ asciidoc --help=manpage
$ asciidoc --help=syntax
31.1. Customizing Help
To change, delete or add your own help topics edit a help.conf file.
The file location will depend on whether you want the topics
to apply to all users, to a single user or to a single project.
Help topics are stored help.conf text files. The help topic files
have the same named section format as other configuration files. The help.conf files are stored in the same locations and
loaded in the same order as other configuration files.
When the a --help command-line option is specified AsciiDoc loads
the help.conf files and then prints the contents of the section
whose name matches the help topic name. If a topic name is not
specified default is used. If a matching help file section is not
found a list of available topics is printed.
32. Tips and Tricks
32.1. Know Your Editor
Writing AsciiDoc documents will be a whole lot more pleasant if you
know your favorite text editor. Learn how to indent and reformat text
blocks, paragraphs, lists and sentences. Tips for vim users
follow.
32.2. Vim Commands for Formatting AsciiDoc
The Vim text editor's gq command is great for reformatting and
indenting AsciiDoc paragraphs and lists.
Tip
|
The Vim website (http://www.vim.org) has a wealth of resources,
including scripts for automated spell checking and ASCII Art drawing. |
32.2.1. Text Wrap Paragraphs
Use the vim :gq command to reformat paragraphs. Setting the
textwidth sets the right text wrap margin; for example:
To reformat a paragraph:
-
Position the cursor at the start of the paragraph.
-
Type gq}.
Execute :help gq command to read about the vim gq command.
Tip
|
Put set commands in your ~/.vimrc file so you don't have to
enter them manually. |
32.2.2. Format Lists
The :gq command can also be used to format bulleted and numbered
lists. First you need to:
-
Set the textwidth right wrap margin.
-
Set the formatoptions n flag to enable numbered list reformatting
(this flag also requires the autoindent option be set).
-
Add fb:*,fb:.,fb:+,fb:> to the comments option to assist the
Vim :gq command reformat the AsciiDoc bulleted and numbered lists
(in the example the C style comments middle part (mb:*) has been
dropped to avoid ambiguity). Run the vim :help format-comments
command for more about reformatting).
For example:
:set textwidth=70 formatoptions=tcqn autoindent
:set comments=s1:/*,ex:*/,://,b:#,:%,fb:-,fb:*,fb:.,fb:+,fb:>
Now you can format simple lists that use dash, asterisk, period and
plus bullets along with numbered ordered lists:
-
Position the cursor at the start of the list.
-
Type gq}.
Tip
|
Assign the gq} command to the Q key with the :nnoremap Q gq}
command or put it in your ~/.vimrc file to so it's always available. |
Here's how I setup my .vimrc file:
nnoremap Q gq}
autocmd BufRead,BufNewFile *.txt,README,TODO,CHANGELOG,NOTES
\ setlocal autoindent expandtab tabstop=8 softtabstop=2 shiftwidth=2
\ textwidth=70 wrap formatoptions=tcqn
\ comments=s1:/*,ex:*/,://,b:#,:%,:XCOMM,fb:-,fb:*,fb:+,fb:.,fb:>
32.2.3. Indent Paragraphs
Indent whole paragraphs by indenting the fist line with the desired
indent and then executing the gq} command.
32.3. Troubleshooting
-
The asciidoc(1) -v (—verbose) command-line option displays the
order of configuration file loading and warns of potential
configuration file problems.
-
Not all valid AsciiDoc documents produce valid backend markup. Read
the AsciiDoc Backends section if AsciiDoc output is rejected
as non-conformant by a backend processor.
32.4. Gotchas
-
Misinterpreted text formatting
-
If text in your document is incorrectly interpreted as formatting
instructions you can suppress formatting by placing a backslash
character immediately in front of the leading quote character(s).
For example in the following line the backslash prevents text
between the two asterisks from being output in a strong (bold)
font:
Add `\*.cs` files and `*.resx` files.
-
Overlapping text formatting
-
Overlapping text formatting will generate illegal overlapping
markup tags which will result in downstream XML parsing errors.
Here's an example:
Some *strong markup 'that overlaps* emphasized markup'.
-
Ambiguous underlines
-
A DelimitedBlock can immediately follow paragraph without an
intervening blank line, but be careful, a single line paragraph
underline may be misinterpreted as a section title underline
resulting in a “closing block delimiter expected” error.
-
Ambiguous ordered list items
-
Lines beginning with numbers at the end of sentences will be
interpreted as ordered list items. The following example
(incorrectly) begins a new list with item number 1999:
He was last sighted in
1999. Since then things have moved on.
The list item out of sequence warning makes it unlikely that this
problem will go unnoticed.
-
Escaping inside DSV table data
-
Delimiter separated text uses C style backslash escape sequences.
If you want to enter a backslash (for example, to escape AsciiDoc
text formatting or an inline macro) you need to escape it by
entering two backslashes.
-
Special characters in attribute values
-
Special character substitution precedes attribute substitution so
if attribute values contain special characters you may, depending
on the substitution context, need to escape the special characters
yourself. For example:
$ asciidoc -a 'companyname=Bill & Ben' mydoc.txt
-
Macro attribute lists
-
If named attribute list entries are present then all string
attribute values must be quoted. For example:
["Desktop screenshot",width=32]
32.5. Combining Separate Documents
You have a number of stand-alone AsciiDoc documents that you want to
process as a single document. Simply processing them with a series of
include macros won't work, because instead of starting at level 1
the section levels of the combined document start at level 0 (the
document title level).
The solution is to redefine the title underlines so that document and
section titles are pushed down one level.
-
Push the standard title underlines down one level by defining a new
level 0 underline in a custom configuration file. For example
combined.conf:
[titles]
underlines="__","==","--","~~","^^"
-
If you use single line titles you'll need to make corresponding
adjustments to the [titles] section sect0…sect4 entries.
-
Create a top level wrapper document. For example combined.txt:
Combined Document Title
_______________________
include::document1.txt[]
include::document2.txt[]
include::document3.txt[]
-
Process the wrapper document. For example:
$ asciidoc --conf-file=combined.conf combined.txt
Actually the —conf-file option is unnecessary as asciidoc(1)
automatically looks for a same-named .conf file.
-
The combined document title uses the newly defined level 0 underline
(underscore characters).
-
Put a blank line between the include macro lines to ensure the
title of the included document is not seen as part of the last
paragraph of the previous document.
-
You won't want document Headers (Author and Revision lines) in the
included files — conditionally exclude them if they are necessary
for stand-alone processing.
32.6. Processing Document Sections Separately
You have divided your AsciiDoc document into separate files (one per top level
section) which are combined and processed with the following top level
document:
Combined Document Title
=======================
Joe Bloggs
v1.0, 12-Aug-03
include::section1.txt[]
include::section2.txt[]
include::section3.txt[]
You also want to process the section files as separate documents.
This is easy because asciidoc(1) will quite happily process
section1.txt, section2.txt and section3.txt separately.
If you want to promote the section levels up one level, so the
document is processed just like a stand-alone document, then pop the
section underline definition up one level:
[titles]
underlines="--","~~","^^","++","__"
The last "__" underline is a dummy that won't actually be used but
is necessary to legitimize the underline definition.
This is just the reverse of the technique used for combining separate
documents explained in the previous section.
32.7. Processing Document Chunks
asciidoc(1) can be used as a filter, so you can pipe chunks of text
through it. For example:
$ echo 'Hello *World!*' | asciidoc -s -
<p>Hello <strong>World!</strong></p>
The -s (—no-header-footer) command-line option suppresses header
and footer output and is useful if the processed output is to be
included in another file.
32.8. Badges in HTML Page Footers
See the [footer] section in the AsciiDoc distribution xhtml11.conf
configuration file.
32.9. Pretty Printing AsciiDoc Output
If the indentation and layout of the asciidoc(1) output is not to your
liking you can:
-
Change the indentation and layout of configuration file markup
template sections. The {empty} glossary entry is useful for
outputting trailing blank lines in markup templates.
-
Or use Dave Raggett's excellent HTML Tidy program to tidy
asciidoc(1) output. Example:
$ asciidoc -b docbook -o - mydoc.txt | tidy -indent -xml >mydoc.xml
HTML Tidy can be downloaded from http://tidy.sourceforge.net/
32.10. Supporting Minor DocBook DTD Variations
The conditional inclusion of DocBook SGML markup at the end of the
distribution docbook.conf file illustrates how to support minor DTD
variations. The included sections override corresponding entries from
preceding sections.
32.11. Shipping Stand-alone AsciiDoc Source
Reproducing presentation documents from some else's source has one
major problem: unless your configuration files are the same as the
creator's you won't get the same output.
The solution is to create a single backend specific configuration file
using the asciidoc(1) -c (—dump-conf) command-line option. You
then ship this file along with the AsciiDoc source document plus the
asciidoc.py script. The only end user requirement is that they have
Python installed (and of course that they consider you a trusted
source). This example creates a composite HTML configuration
file for mydoc.txt:
$ asciidoc -cb xhtml11 mydoc.txt > mydoc-xhtml11.conf
Ship mydoc.txt, mydoc-html.conf, and asciidoc.py. With
these three files (and a Python interpreter) the recipient can
regenerate the HMTL output:
$ ./asciidoc.py -eb xhtml11 mydoc.txt
The -e (—no-conf) option excludes the use of implicit
configuration files, ensuring that only entries from the
mydoc-html.conf configuration are used.
32.12. Inserting Blank Space
Adjust your style sheets to add the correct separation between block
elements. Inserting blank paragraphs containing a single non-breaking
space character {nbsp} works but is an ad hoc solution compared
to using style sheets.
32.13. Closing Open Sections
You can close off section tags up to level N by calling the
eval::[Section.setlevel(N)] system macro. This is useful if you
want to include a section composed of raw markup. The following
example includes a DocBook glossary division at the top section level
(level 0):
ifdef::backend-docbook[]
eval::[Section.setlevel(0)]
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
<glossary>
<title>Glossary</title>
<glossdiv>
...
</glossdiv>
</glossary>
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
endif::backend-docbook[]
32.14. Validating Output Files
Use xmllint(1) to check the AsciiDoc generated markup is both well
formed and valid. Here are some examples:
$ xmllint --nonet --noout --valid docbook-file.xml
$ xmllint --nonet --noout --valid xhtml11-file.html
$ xmllint --nonet --noout --valid --html html4-file.html
The —valid option checks the file is valid against the document
type's DTD, if the DTD is not installed in your system's catalog then
it will be fetched from it's Internet location. If you omit the
—valid option the document will only be checked that it is well
formed.
33. Glossary
-
Block element
-
An AsciiDoc block element is a document entity composed of one or
more whole lines of text.
-
Inline element
-
AsciiDoc inline elements occur within block element textual
content, they perform formatting and substitution tasks.
-
Formal element
-
An AsciiDoc block element that has a BlockTitle. Formal elements
are normally listed in front or back matter, for example lists of
tables, examples and figures.
-
Verbatim element
-
The word verbatim indicates that white space and line breaks in
the source document are to be preserved in the output document.
34. Appendix A: Migration Notes
34.1. Version 7 to version 8
-
A new set of quotes has been introduced which may match inline text
in existing documents — if they do you'll need to escape the
matched text with backslashes.
-
The index entry inline macro syntax has changed — if your documents
include indexes you may need to edit them.
-
Replaced a2x(1) --no-icons and --no-copy options with their
negated equivalents: --icons and --copy respectively. The
default behavior has also changed — the use of icons and copying of
icon and CSS files must be specified explicitly with the --icons
and --copy options.
The rationale for the changes can be found in the AsciiDoc
CHANGELOG.
Note
|
If you want to disable unconstrained quotes, the new alternative
constrained quotes syntax and the new index entry syntax then you can
define the attribute asciidoc7compatible (for example by using the
-a asciidoc7compatible command-line option). |
34.2. Version 6 to version 7
The changes that affect the most users relate to renamed and
deprecated backends and command-line syntax:
-
The html backend has been renamed html4.
-
The xhtml backend has been deprecated to xhtml-deprecated (use
the new xhtml11 backend in preference).
-
The use of CSS specific css and css-embedded backends has been
dropped in favor of using attributes (see the table below and
xhtml backend attributes).
-
Deprecated features that emitted warnings in prior versions are no
longer tolerated.
-
The command-line syntax for deleting (undefining) an attribute has
changed from -a ^name to -a name!.
Table: Equivalent command-line syntax
Version 6 (old)
|
Version 7 (new)
|
Version 7 (backward compatible)
|
-b html
|
-b html4
|
-b html4
|
-b css
|
-b xhtml11 -a linkcss -a icons
|
-b xhtml-deprecated -a css -a linkcss -a icons
|
-b css-embedded
|
-b xhtml11 -a icons
|
-b xhtml-deprecated -a css -a icons
|
-b xhtml
|
-b xhtml11
|
-b xhtml-deprecated
|
-b docbook-sgml
|
-b docbook -a sgml
|
-b docbook -a sgml
|
If you've customised version 6 distribution stylesheets then you'll
need to either bring them in line with the new
./stylesheets/xhtml11*.css class and id names or stick with the
backward compatible xhtml-deprecated backend.
Changes to configuration file syntax:
-
To undefine an attribute in the [attributes] section use name!
instead of name (name now sets that attribute to a blank
string).
35. Appendix B: Packager Notes
The AsciiDoc distribution tarball unpacks all files to a single
directory, this is fine when installing a local copy of AsciiDoc but
it doesn't work so well for installing a single shared system copy.
Read the INSTALL file that comes with AsciiDoc distribution
(http://www.methods.co.nz/asciidoc/INSTALL.html).
Here's a summary of the installation procedure (see also the
install.sh shell script in the AsciiDoc distribution):
-
Unpack entire distribution tarball to /usr/share/asciidoc/.
-
Move asciidoc.py to /usr/bin/; rename to asciidoc; if
necessary modify shebang line; ensure executable permissions are
set.
-
Move a2x to /usr/bin/; if necessary modify shebang line; ensure
executable permissions are set.
-
Move the ./*.conf files to /etc/asciidoc/.
-
Move ./filters/{code-filter.conf,code-filter.py} to
/etc/asciidoc/filters/.
-
Move ./docbook-xsl/*.xsl to /etc/asciidoc/docbook-xsl/.
-
Copy ./stylesheets/*.css to /etc/asciidoc/stylesheets/.
-
Copy ./javascripts/*.js to /etc/asciidoc/javascripts/.
-
Copy ./images/icons/* to /etc/asciidoc/images/icons/
(recursively including the icons subdirectory and it's contents).
-
Compress the asciidoc(1) and ax2(1) man pages (./doc/*.1) with
gzip(1) and move them to /usr/share/man/man1/.
Leaving stylesheets and images in /usr/share/asciidoc/ ensures the
docs and example website are not broken.
36. Appendix C: AsciiDoc Safe Mode
AsciiDoc safe mode skips potentially dangerous sections in AsciiDoc
source files by inhibiting the execution of arbitrary code or the
inclusion of arbitrary files.
The safe mode is enabled by default and can only be disabled using the
asciidoc(1) —unsafe command-line option.
Safe mode constraints
-
eval, sys and sys2 executable attributes and block macros are
not executed.
-
include::<filename>[] and include1::<filename>[] block macro
files must reside inside the parent file's directory.
-
{include:<filename>} executable attribute files must reside
inside the source document directory.
-
Passthrough Blocks are dropped.
Warning
|
The safe mode is not designed to protect against unsafe AsciiDoc
configuration files. Be especially careful when:
-
Implementing filters.
-
Implementing elements that don't escape special characters.
-
Accepting configuration files from untrusted sources.
|
37. Appendix D: Installing FOP on Windows
-
Download latest FOP distribution from http://xml.apache.org/fop/.
-
Unzip to C:\bin.
-
Edit the distribution fop.bat file and put it in the search
PATH:
set LOCAL_FOP_HOME=C:\bin\fop-0.20.5\
-
Download the JIMI image processing library from
http://java.sun.com/products/jimi/.
-
Extract the JimiProClasses.jar library from the JIMI distribution
and copy to the FOP ./lib directory.
-
Edit the distribution fop.bat file again and add the JIMI library
to LOCALCLASSPATH:
set LOCALCLASSPATH=%LOCALCLASSPATH%;%LIBDIR%\JimiProClasses.jar
-
You should now be able to run FOP from a DOS prompt — execute
it without arguments to get a list of command options:
38. Appendix E: Installing FOP on Linux
Here's how I installed FOP on Fedora Core 1:
-
Download latest FOP distribution from http://xml.apache.org/fop/.
-
Install the FOP distribution:
$ su
# cd /usr/local/lib
# unzip ~srackham/tmp/fop-0.20.5-bin.zip
# cp /usr/local/lib/fop-0.20.5/fop.sh /usr/local/bin
# chmod +x /usr/local/bin/fop.sh
-
Edit the FOP start script fop.sh adding this line to the start of
the script:
FOP_HOME=/usr/local/lib/fop-0.20.5
-
Download the JIMI image processing library from
http://java.sun.com/products/jimi/.
-
Extract the JimiProClasses.jar library from the JIMI distribution
and copy to the FOP lib directory.
# cp ~srackham/tmp/JimiProClasses.jar /usr/local/lib/fop-0.20.5/lib/
-
You should now be able to run FOP from a DOS prompt — execute
it without arguments to get a list of command options:
39. Appendix F: Installing Java on Windows
First check that Java is not already installed:
-
Open a DOS Command Prompt window.
-
Enter this command:
You should see something like this:
java version "1.4.2_01"
Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.4.2_01-b06)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.4.2_01-b06, mixed mode)
If you don't Java is not installed and you need to:
-
Download the Java Runtime (JRE) for Windows from
http://java.sun.com.
-
Install using the instructions on the download page.
40. Appendix G: Installing Java on Linux
Check Java is not already installed by entering the following command:
You should see something like this:
java version "1.4.2_01"
Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.4.2_01-b06)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.4.2_01-b06, mixed mode)
If you don't Java is not installed and you need to download the Sun
Java Runtime (JRE) for Linux from http://java.sun.com.
Here's how I installed the RPM version of the JRE on Fedora Core 1:
$ ./j2re-1_4_2_05-linux-i586-rpm.bin
$ su
# rpm -vih j2re-1_4_2_05-linux-i586.rpm
# vi /etc/profile.d/java.sh
# chmod +x /etc/profile.d/java.sh
^D
$ . /etc/profile.d/java.sh
$ java -version
java version "1.4.2_05"
Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build
1.4.2_05-b04)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.4.2_05-b04, mixed mode)
$
The following two lines are entered into the /etc/profile.d/java.sh
file:
export PATH=$PATH:/usr/java/j2re1.4.2_05/bin/
export JAVA_HOME=/usr/java/j2re1.4.2_05
Note
|
If you're using GNU Java on Debian (or in my case Kubuntu) you
will need to set the appropriate GNU JAVA_HOME. For example on
Kubuntu Breezy: |
export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-1.4.2-gcj-4.0-1.4.2.0/
`/etc/asciidoc/filters` or `~/.asciidoc/filters` directories.
41. Appendix H: Using AsciiDoc with non-English Languages
AsciiDoc can process UTF-8 character sets but there are some things
you need to be aware of:
-
Admonition captions, example block title prefixes,
table title prefixes and image block title prefixes default
to English. You can customise these captions and prefixes with the
caption attribute. Alternatively you could override the related
AsciiDoc configuration file entries with a custom configuration
file.
Note
|
The caption attribute only applies if you are using the
xhtml11 or html4 backends — if you are going the DocBook route
you will need to configure the XSL Stylesheets for your language. |
-
Some character sets display double-width characters (for example
Japanese). As far as title underlines are concerned they
should be treated as single character. If you think this looks
untidy so you may prefer to use the single line title
format.
42. Appendix I: ASCIIMathML Support
ASCIIMathML is
a clever JavaScript written by Peter Jipsen that transforms
mathematical formulae written in plain text to standard mathematical
notation on an HTML page.
To enable ASCIIMathML support on the xhtml11 backend include the -a
asciimath command-line option. Here's what the asciimath attribute
does:
When entering ASCIIMathML formulas you must enclose them inside
double-dollar passthroughs (this is necessary because
ASCIIMathML characters clash with AsciiDoc formatting characters). The
double-dollar passthrough has the bonus of also escaping special
characters so the output document is valid XHTML. You can see an
ASCIIMathML example at
http://www.methods.co.nz/asciidoc/asciimath.html, or alternatively
compile and view the example that is shipped with the AsciiDoc
distribution:
$ cd ./examples
$ asciidoc -a asciimath asciimath.txt
Note
|
-
See the
ASCIIMathML
website for ASCIIMathML documentation and the latest version.
-
If you use Mozilla you need to install the
required math fonts.
-
If you use Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 you need to install
MathPlayer.
|