Asciidoctor is a pure Ruby processor for converting AsciiDoc source files and strings into HTML 5, DocBook 4.5 and other formats. It’s published as a RubyGem and is available under the MIT open source license.
Asciidoctor uses a set of built-in ERB templates to render the document to HTML 5 or DocBook 4.5. We’ve matched the rendered output as close as possible to the default output of the native Python processor. You can override this behavior by providing Tilt-compatible templates. See the Usage section for more details.
Asciidoctor currently works (read as 'tested') with Ruby 1.8.7, Ruby 1.9.3, Ruby 2.0.0, JRuby 1.7.4 and Rubinius nightly (on Linux, Mac and Windows). We expect it will work with other versions of Ruby as well and would welcome help in testing it out.
The initial code from which Asciidoctor emerged was written by Nick Hengeveld to process the git man pages for the Git project site. Refer to commit history of asciidoc.rb to view the initial contributions and contributors.
The source code can now be found in the Asciidoctor source repository on GitHub.
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Note
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We’re working hard to make Asciidoctor a drop-in replacement for AsciiDoc. We’re very close, with over 700 tests that ensure compatibility. The march is on towards full compliance and beyond. |
To install the gem:
gem install asciidoctor
Or if you prefer bundler, add the asciidoctor gem to your Gemfile,
source 'https://rubygems.org' gem 'asciidoctor'
then install it using bundler:
bundle install
If you’re running Fedora, you can install the gem using yum:
sudo yum install rubygem-asciidoctor
The benefit of installing the gem via yum is that yum will also install Ruby if it’s not already on your machine.
Asciidoctor has both a command line interface (CLI) and an API. The CLI is a drop-in replacement for the asciidoc.py command from the Python implementation. The API is intended for integration with other software projects and is suitable for server-side applications, such as Rails, Sinatra and GitHub.
After installing the asciidoctor gem, the asciidoctor commandline interface should be available on your PATH. To invoke it, simply execute:
asciidoctor <asciidoc_file>
This will use the built-in defaults for options and create a new file in the same directory as the input file, with the same base name, but with the .html extension.
There are many other options available and full help is provided via:
asciidoctor --help
or in the man page.
There is also an asciidoctor-safe command, which turns on safe mode by default, preventing access to files outside the parent directory of the source file. This mode is very similar to the safe mode of asciidoc.py.
To use Asciidoctor in your application, you first need to require the gem:
require 'asciidoctor'
With that in place, you can start processing AsciiDoc documents.
To parse a file into an Asciidoctor::Document object:
doc = Asciidoctor.load_file('your_file.asciidoc')
You can get information about the document:
puts doc.doctitle puts doc.attributes
More than likely, you want to just render the document.
To render a file containing AsciiDoc markup to HTML 5:
Asciidoctor.render_file('your_file.asciidoc', :in_place => true)
The command will output to the file your_file.html in the same directory. You can render the file to DocBook 4.5 by setting the backend attribute to 'docbook':
Asciidoctor.render_file('your_file.asciidoc', :in_place => true,
:attributes => {'backend' => 'docbook'})
The command will output to the file your_file.xml in the same directory. (If you’re on Linux, you can view the file using yelp).
To render an AsciiDoc-formatted string:
puts Asciidoctor.render('*This* is it.')
When rendering a string, the header and footer are excluded by default to make Asciidoctor consistent with other lightweight markup engines like Markdown. If you want the header and footer, just enable it using the :header_footer option:
puts Asciidoctor.render('*This* is it.', :header_footer => true)
Now you’ll get a full HTML 5 file. As before, you can also produce DocBook 4.5:
puts Asciidoctor.render('*This* is it.', :header_footer => true,
:attributes => {'backend' => 'docbook'})
If you don’t like the output you see, you can change it. Any of it!
Asciidoctor allows you to override the built-in templates used to render almost any individual AsciiDoc element. If you provide a directory of Tilt-compatible templates, named in such a way that Asciidoctor can figure out which template goes with which element, Asciidoctor will use the templates in this directory instead of its built-in templates for any elements for which it finds a matching template. It will fallback to its default templates for everything else.
puts Asciidoctor.render('*This* is it.', :header_footer => true,
:template_dir => 'templates')
The Document and Section templates should begin with document. and section., respectively. The file extension is used by Tilt to determine which view framework it will use to use to render the template. For instance, if you want to write the template in ERB, you’d name these two templates document.html.erb and section.html.erb. To use Haml, you’d name them document.html.haml and section.html.haml.
Templates for block elements, like a Paragraph or Sidebar, would begin with block_<style>.. For instance, to override the default Paragraph template with an ERB template, put a file named block_paragraph.html.erb in the template directory you pass to the Document constructor using the :template_dir option.
For more usage examples, see the (massive) test suite.
While Asciidoctor aims to be compliant with the AsciiDoc syntax, there are some differences which are important to keep in mind. In some cases, it’s to enforce a rule we believe is too lax or ambiguous in AsciiDoc. In other cases, it’s a tradeoff for speed, smarter processing or a feature we just haven’t yet implemented. (You’ll also notice that Asciidoctor executes about 25x as fast as AsciiDoc).
Here are the known cases where Asciidoctor differs from AsciiDoc:
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Asciidoctor enables safe mode by default when using the API (SafeMode::SECURE)
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Asciidoctor safe mode is even more safe than AsciiDoc’s safe mode
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Asciidoctor enforces symmetric block delimiters (the length of start and end delimiters for a block must match!)
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Section title underlines must be within 1 character of the length of the title (AsciiDoc allows an offset of 3)
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Asciidoctor’s default HTML backend matches AsciiDoc’s HTML 5 backend (whereas XHTML 1.1 is the default HTML backend in AsciiDoc)
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Asciidoctor adds viewport meta tag to <head> to optimize mobile viewing
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Asciidoctor handles inline anchors more cleanly
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AsciiDoc adds an <a> tag in the line and that markup gets caught in the generated id
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Asciidoctor promotes the id of the anchor as the section id
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Asciidoctor strips XML entities from the section title before generating the id (makes for cleaner section ids)
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Asciidoctor uses <code> instead of <span class="monospace"> around inline literal text in the HTML backend
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Asciidoctor does not wrap email next to author name in header in angle brackets
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Asciidoctor allows email field to be a URL and renders it as such
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Asciidoctor is much more lenient about attribute list parsing (double quotes are rarely needed, though you may want to keep them for compatibility)
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Asciidoctor adds the type attribute on ordered lists to provide hint for numbering style when stylesheet is absent (such as in embedded mode)
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Asciidoctor recognizes opts as an alias for the options attribute.
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Asciidoctor creates xref labels using the text from the linked section title when rendering HTML to match how DocBook works
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Asciidoctor allows commas to be used in xref labels, whereas AsciiDoc cuts off the label at the location of the first comma
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Asciidoctor removes indentation for non-literal paragraphs in a list item
NoteIn general, Asciidoctor handles whitespace much more intelligently -
Asciidoctor does not output an empty <dd> for labeled list items that don’t have a definition
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In Asciidoctor, a horizontal ruler can have attributes
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Asciidoctor wraps <col> elements in <colgroup> in tables
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Asciidoctor uses <code> around content in monospaced table cells
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Asciidoctor skips over line comments in tables, whereas AsciiDoc doesn’t
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Asciidoctor uses its own API rather than a command line invocation to handle table cells that have AsciiDoc content
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Asciidoctor supports resolving variables from parent document in table cells with AsciiDoc content
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AsciiDoc doesn’t carry over the doctype attribute passed from the commandline when rendering AsciiDoc table cells, whereas Asciidoctor does
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Asciidoctor does not require commas between attributes with quoted values in a block attribute list
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Asciidoctor strips the file extension from the target image when generating alt text if no alt text is provided
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Asciidoctor reifies the toc in the header of the document instead of relying on JavaScript to create it
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Asciidoctor sets CSS class on toc element, read from the toc-class attribute; defaults to toc attribute name (toc or toc2).
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Asciidoctor honors the id, title, role and levels attributes set on the toc macro.
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Asciidoctor does not output two TOCs with the same id.
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Asciidoctor is nice about using a section title syntax inside a delimited block by simply ignoring it (AsciiDoc issues warnings)
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Asciidoctor honors the alternate style name "discrete" for a floating title (i.e., [discrete])
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Asciidoctor supports the pass style on open blocks and paragraphs
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Asciidoctor supports syntax highlighting of listing, literal or open blocks that have the "source" style out of the box
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Asciidoctor honors the source-highlighter values coderay and highlightjs, using CodeRay or highlight.js, respectively
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Asciidoctor does not currently support Pygments for source highlighting
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Asciidoctor gracefully falls back to listing block if no source language is specified
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Asciidoctor sets these additional intrinsic attributes
- asciidoctor
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indicates Asciidoctor is being used; useful for conditional processing
- asciidoctor-version
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indicates which version of Asciidoctor is in use
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Asciidoctor does not support deprecated tables (you don’t want them anyway)
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Use can set the extension for icons using the icontype attribute (AsciiDoc defaults to .png)
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Asciidoctor uses the <blockquote> for the content and <cite> tag for attribution title in the HTML output for quote blocks, requiring some additional styling to match AsciiDoc
blockquote.content { padding: 0; margin; 0 } cite { color: navy; } -
Asciidoctor supports markdown-style blockquotes as well as a shorthand for a blockquote paragraph.
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Asciidoctor supports markdown-style headings (section titles)
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Asciidoctor does not support the deprecated index term syntax (
` and `+) -
Asciidoctor includes a modern default stylesheet based on Foundation.
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Asciidoctor links to, rather than embeds, the default stylesheet into the document by default (e.g., linkcss). To include the default stylesheet, you can either use the copycss attribute to tell Asciidoctor to copy it to the output directory, or you can embed it into the document using the linkcss! attribute. You can also provide your own stylesheet using the stylesheet attribute.
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Asciidoctor introduces the hardbreaks attribute, which inserts a line break character after each line of wrapped text
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Asciidoctor introduces the idseparator attribute to customize the separator used in generated section ids (AsciiDoc hardcodes _)
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Asciidoctor does not support system evaluation macros
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Asciidoctor does not support displaying comments
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Asciidoctor properly calculates author initials if attribute reference is used in name
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Asciidoctor allows the author and revision attributes to be referenced in subsequent attribute entries in header (unlike AsciiDoc)
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Asciidoctor allows multiple authors to be defined, separated by semicolon. In DocBook backend, the authors are listed in an <authorgroup> element.
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Asciidoctor allows the document id to be set using above the document header (adds id attribute to <body> tag)
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Assigning value to the listing-caption attribute will enable automatic captions for listings (like examples, tables and figures)
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The ifeval::[] macro is constrained for the strict purpose of comparing values of attributes
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The include::[] macro is converted to a link to the target document when SafeMode is SECURE or greater (this makes for a friendly experience on GitHub)
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Asciidoctor supports up to 6 section levels (to cover all heading levels in HTML) whereas AsciiDoc stops at 5; note the 6 section level is only available using the single-line section title syntax
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Admonition block style is added to class of outer div in html5 backend in Asciidoctor
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Admonition block caption can be overridden in Asciidoctor using the caption block attribute
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Asciidoctor will parse attributes in link macros if the linkattrs attribute is set on the document.
If there’s a difference you don’t see in this list, check the issue tracker to see if it’s an outstanding feature, or file an issue to report the difference.
In the spirit of free software, 'everyone' is encouraged to help improve this project.
Here are some ways you can contribute:
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by using alpha, beta, and prerelease versions
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by reporting bugs
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by suggesting new features
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by writing or editing documentation
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by writing specifications
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by writing code — 'No patch is too small.'
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fix typos
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add comments
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clean up inconsistent whitespace
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write tests!
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by refactoring code
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by fixing issues
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by reviewing patches
We use the GitHub issue tracker associated with this project to track bugs and features. Before submitting a bug report or feature request, check to make sure it hasn’t already been submitted. When submitting a bug report, please include a Gist that includes any details that may help reproduce the bug, including your gem version, Ruby version, and operating system.
Most importantly, since Asciidoctor is a text processor, reproducing most bugs requires that we have some snippet of text on which Asciidoctor exhibits the bad behavior.
An ideal bug report would include a pull request with failing specs.
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Add tests for your unimplemented feature or bug fix.
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Run bundle exec rake. If your tests pass, return to step 3.
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Implement your feature or bug fix.
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Run bundle exec rake. If your tests fail, return to step 5.
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Add documentation for your feature or bug fix.
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If your changes are not 100% documented, go back to step 7.
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Add, commit, and push your changes.
This library aims to support the following Ruby implementations:
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Ruby 1.8.7
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Ruby 1.9.3
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Ruby 2.0.0
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JRuby 1.7.4
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Rubinius nightly
If something doesn’t work on one of these interpreters, it should be considered a bug.
If you would like this library to support another Ruby version, you may volunteer to be a maintainer. Being a maintainer entails making sure all tests run and pass on that implementation. When something breaks on your implementation, you will be personally responsible for providing patches in a timely fashion. If critical issues for a particular implementation exist at the time of a major release, support for that Ruby version may be dropped.
- Project home page
- Source repository
- Issue tracker
- Mailinglist / forum
- GitHub organization
Asciidoctor was written by Dan Allen, Ryan Waldron, Jason Porter, Nick Hengeveld and other contributors.
AsciiDoc was written by Stuart Rackham and has received contributions from many other individuals.
Copyright © 2012-2013 Dan Allen and Ryan Waldron. Free use of this software is granted under the terms of the MIT License.
See the LICENSE file for details.