index.txt

AsciiDoc Home Page
==================
// Web page meta data.
:keywords:    AsciiDoc, DocBook, EPUB, PDF, ebooks, slideshow, slidy, man page
:description: AsciiDoc is a text document format for writing notes,  +
              documentation, articles, books, ebooks, slideshows,    +
              web pages, man pages and blogs.  AsciiDoc files can be +
              translated to many formats including HTML, PDF, EPUB,  +
              man page.


.{revdate}: AsciiDoc {revnumber} Released
************************************************************************
Read the link:CHANGELOG.html[CHANGELOG] for release highlights and a
full list of all additions, changes and bug fixes. Changes are
documented in the updated link:userguide.html[User Guide]. See the
link:INSTALL.html[Installation page] for downloads and and
installation instructions.

'Stuart Rackham'
************************************************************************

Introduction
------------
{description}

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.

AsciiDoc is free software and is licenced under the terms of the 'GNU
General Public License version 2' (GPLv2).

TIP: The pages you are reading were written using AsciiDoc, to view
the corresponding AsciiDoc source click on the *Page Source* menu item
in the left hand margin.


Overview and Examples
---------------------
You write an AsciiDoc document the same way you would write a
normal text document, there are no markup tags or weird format
notations. AsciiDoc files are designed to be viewed, edited and
printed directly or translated to other presentation formats using
the asciidoc(1) command.

The asciidoc(1) command translates AsciiDoc files to HTML, XHTML and
DocBook markups.  DocBook can be post-processed to presentation
formats such as HTML, PDF, EPUB, DVI, LaTeX, roff, and Postscript
using readily available Open Source tools.

Example Articles
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
- This XHTML version of the
  link:asciidoc.css-embedded.html[AsciiDoc User Guide]
  was generated by AsciiDoc from
  link:asciidoc.txt[this AsciiDoc file].

- Here's the link:asciidoc.html[same document] created by first
  generating DocBook markup using AsciiDoc and then converting the
  DocBook markup to HTML using 'DocBook XSL Stylesheets'.

- The User Guide again, this time a
  link:chunked/index.html[chunked version].

- AsciiDoc generated this link:article-standalone.html[stand-alone
  HTML file] containing embedded CSS, JavaScript and images from this
  link:article.txt[AsciiDoc article template] with this command:

  asciidoc -a data-uri -a icons -a toc -a max-width=55em article.txt

- The same link:article.txt[AsciiDoc article template] generated
  link:article-html5-toc2.html[this HTML 5] (the 'toc2' attribute puts
  a table of contents in the left margin) from this command:

  asciidoc -b html5 -a icons -a toc2 -a theme=flask article.txt

- The same link:article.txt[AsciiDoc article template] produced
  this link:article.html[HTML file] and this
  link:article.pdf[PDF file] via DocBook markup generated by AsciiDoc.

[[X7]]
Example Books
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
AsciiDoc markup supports all the standard DocBook frontmatter and
backmatter sections (dedication, preface, bibliography, glossary,
index, colophon) plus footnotes and index entries.

- This link:book.txt[AsciiDoc book] produced link:book.html[this HTML
  file] using the 'DocBook XSL Stylesheets'.
- The link:asciidoc.pdf[PDF formatted AsciiDoc User Guide] was
  generated from asciidoc(1) DocBook output.
- The link:asciidoc.epub[EPUB formatted AsciiDoc User Guide] was
  generated using link:a2x.1.html[a2x].
- This link:book.epub[EPUB formatted book skeleton] was generated
  using link:a2x.1.html[a2x].
- This link:book-multi.txt[multi-part AsciiDoc book] produced
  link:book-multi.html[this HTML file] using the 'DocBook XSL
  Stylesheets'.

Example UNIX Man Pages
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
HTML formatted AsciiDoc man pages
link:asciidoc.1.css-embedded.html[with stylesheets] and
link:asciidoc.1.html[without stylesheets] were generated by AsciiDoc
from link:asciidoc.1.txt[this file].

This link:asciidoc.1[roff formatted  man page] was generated from
asciidoc(1) DocBook output using `xsltproc(1)` and DocBook XSL
Stylesheets.

[[X8]]
Example Slideshows
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The http://www.w3.org/Talks/Tools/Slidy2/[Slidy] backend generates
HTML slideshows that can be viewed in any web browser.  What's nice is
that you can create completely self contained slideshows including
embedded images.

- Here is the link:slidy.html[slidy backend documentation] slideshow
  and here is it's link:slidy.txt[AsciiDoc source].
- An link:slidy-example.html[example slidy slideshow] and the
  link:slidy-example.txt[AsciiDoc source].

Example Web Site
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The link:README-website.html[AsciiDoc website] is included in the
AsciiDoc distribution (in `./examples/website/`) as an example website
built using AsciiDoc.  See `./examples/website/README-website.txt`.

More examples
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
- See below: <<X6,'Documents written using AsciiDoc'>>.
- Example link:newtables.html[Tables].


eBook Publication
-----------------
The two most popular open eBook formats are
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPUB[EPUB] and PDF.
The AsciiDoc link:a2x.1.html[a2x] toolchain wrapper makes it easy to
link:publishing-ebooks-with-asciidoc.html[publish EPUB and PDF eBooks
with AsciiDoc]. See also <<X7,example books>> and
link:epub-notes.html[AsciiDoc EPUB Notes]).


Blogpost weblog client
----------------------
http://srackham.wordpress.com/blogpost-readme/[blogpost] is a
command-line weblog client for publishing AsciiDoc documents to
http://wordpress.org/[WordPress] blog hosts. It creates and updates
weblog posts and pages directly from AsciiDoc source documents.


Source code highlighter
-----------------------
AsciiDoc includes a link:source-highlight-filter.html[source code
highlighter filter] that uses
http://www.gnu.org/software/src-highlite/[GNU source-highlight] to
highlight HTML outputs. You also have the option of using the
http://pygments.org/[Pygments] highlighter.


[[X3]]
Mathematical Formulae
---------------------
You can include mathematical formulae in AsciiDoc XHTML documents using
link:asciimathml.html[ASCIIMathML] or link:latexmathml.html[LaTeXMathML]
notation.

The link:latex-filter.html[AsciiDoc LaTeX filter] translates LaTeX
source to an image that is automatically inserted into the AsciiDoc
output documents.

AsciiDoc also has 'latexmath' macros for DocBook outputs -- they are
documented in link:latexmath.pdf[this PDF file] and can be used in
AsciiDoc documents processed by `dblatex(1)`.


Editor Support
--------------
- An AsciiDoc syntax highlighter for the Vim text editor is included in the
  AsciiDoc distribution (see the 'Vim Syntax Highlighter' appendix in
  the 'AsciiDoc User Guide' for details).
+
.Syntax highlighter screenshot
image::images/highlighter.png[height=400,caption="",link="images/highlighter.png"]

- Dag Wieers has implemented an alternative Vim syntax file for
  AsciiDoc which can be found here
  http://svn.rpmforge.net/svn/trunk/tools/asciidoc-vim/.
- David Avsajanishvili has written a source highlighter for AsciiDoc
  files for http://projects.gnome.org/gtksourceview/[GtkSourceView]
  (used by http://projects.gnome.org/gedit/[gedit] and a number of
  other applications). The project is hosted here:
  https://launchpad.net/asciidoc-gtk-highlight
- AsciiDoc resources for the Emacs editor can be found on the
  http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/AsciiDoc[AsciiDoc  page] at the
  http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/EmacsWiki[Emacs Wiki].
- Christian Zuckschwerdt has written a
  https://github.com/zuckschwerdt/asciidoc.tmbundle[TextMate bundle]
  for AsciiDoc.


Try AsciiDoc on the Web
-----------------------
Thaddée Tyl has written an online live editor named
http://espadrine.github.io/AsciiDocBox/[AsciiDocBox] to try AsciiDoc in
your browser.

You can use http://gist.asciidoctor.org/[DocGist] to preview AsciiDoc
files hosted on GitHub, Dropbox, and other services. DocGist also
features a real-time collaboration mode.

[[X2]]
External Resources and Applications
-----------------------------------
Here are resources that I know of, if you know of more drop me a line
and I'll add them to the list.

- Check the link:INSTALL.html#X2[installation page] for packaged versions
  of AsciiDoc.
- http://asciidoctor.org[Asciidoctor] provides a modern, compliant, and
  substantially faster implementation of the AsciiDoc processor written
  in Ruby. This implementation can also be run on the JVM (with
  AsciidoctorJ) or using JavaScript (with Asciidoctor.js). The
  Asciidoctor project now maintains the official definition of the
  AsciiDoc syntax.
- Alex Efros has written an HTML formatted
  http://powerman.name/doc/asciidoc[AsciiDoc Cheatsheet] using AsciiDoc.
  The Asciidoctor project also provides a comprehensive
  http://asciidoctor.org/docs/asciidoc-syntax-quick-reference/[AsciiDoc
  syntax quick reference].
- Thomas Berker has written an
  http://liksom.info/blog/?q=node/114[AsciiDoc Cheatsheet] in Open
  Document and PDF formats.
- The http://www.wikimatrix.org/[WikiMatrix] website has an excellent
  http://www.wikimatrix.org/syntax.php[web page] that compares the
  various Wiki markup syntaxes. An interesting attempt at Wiki markup
  standardization is http://www.wikicreole.org/[CREOLE].
- Franck Pommereau has written
  http://www.univ-paris12.fr/lacl/pommereau/soft/asciidoctest.html[Asciidoctest],
  a program that doctests snippets of Python code within your Asciidoc
  documents.
- The http://remips.sourceforge.net/[ReMIPS] project website has been
  built using AsciiDoc.
- Here are some link:asciidoc-docbook-xsl.html[DocBook XSL Stylesheets
  Notes].
- Karl Mowatt-Wilson has developed an http://ikiwiki.info/[ikiwiki]
  plugin for AsciiDoc which he uses to render
  http://mowson.org/karl[his website].  The plugin is available
  http://www.mowson.org/karl/colophon/[here] and there is some
  discussion of the ikiwiki integration
  http://ikiwiki.info/users/KarlMW/discussion/[here].
- Glenn Eychaner has
  http://groups.google.com/group/asciidoc/browse_thread/thread/bf04b55628efe214[reworked
  the Asciidoc plugin for ikiwiki] that was created by Karl Mowson,
  the source can be downloaded from
  http://dl.dropbox.com/u/11256359/asciidoc.pm
- David Hajage has written an AsciiDoc package for the
  http://www.r-project.org/[R Project] (R is a free software
  environment for statistical computing).  'ascii' is available on
  'CRAN' (just run `install.packages("ascii")` from R).  Briefly,
  'ascii' replaces R results in AsciiDoc document with AsciiDoc
  markup.  More information and examples here:
  http://eusebe.github.com/ascii/.
- Pascal Rapaz has written a Python script to automate AsciiDoc
  website generation. You can find it at
  http://www.rapazp.ch/opensource/tools/asciidoc.html.
- Jared Henley has written
  http://jared.henley.id.au/software/awb/documentation.html[AsciiDoc
  Website Builder]. 'AsciiDoc Website Builder' (awb) is a python
  program that automates the building of of a website written in
  AsciiDoc. All you need to write is the AsciiDoc source plus a few
  simple configuration files.
- Brad Adkins has written
  http://dbixjcl.org/jcl/asciidocgen/asciidocgen.html[AsciiDocGen], a
  web site generation and deployment tool that allows you write your
  web site content in AsciiDoc. The
  http://dbixjcl.org/jcl/asciidocgen/asciidocgen.html[AsciiDocGen web
  site] is managed using 'AsciiDocGen'.
- Filippo Negroni has developed a set of tools to facilitate 'literate
  programming' using AsciiDoc.  The set of tools is called
  http://eweb.sourceforge.net/[eWEB].
- http://vanderwijk.info/2009/4/23/full-text-based-document-generation-using-asciidoc-and-ditaa[Ivo's
  blog] describes a http://ditaa.sourceforge.net/[ditaa] filter for
  AsciiDoc which converts http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII_art[ASCII
  art] into graphics.
- http://github.com/github/gollum[Gollum] is a git-powered wiki, it
  supports various formats, including AsciiDoc.
- Gregory Romé has written an
  http://github.com/gpr/redmine_asciidoc_formatter[AsciiDoc plugin]
  for the http://www.redmine.org/[Redmine] project management
  application.
- Paul Hsu has started a
  http://github.com/paulhsu/AsciiDoc.CHT.userguide[Chinese translation
  of the AsciiDoc User Guide].
- Dag Wieers has written
  http://dag.wieers.com/home-made/unoconv/[UNOCONV]. 'UNOCONV' can
  export AsciiDoc outputs to OpenOffice export formats.
- Ed Keith has written http://codeextactor.berlios.de/[Code
  Extractor], it extracts code snippets from source code files and
  inserts them into AsciiDoc documents.
- The http://csrp.iut-blagnac.fr/jmiwebsite/home/[JMI website] hosts
  a number of extras for AsciiDoc and Slidy written by Jean-Michel
  Inglebert.
- Ryan Tomayko has written an number of
  http://tomayko.com/src/adoc-themes/[themes for AsciiDoc] along with
  a http://tomayko.com/src/adoc-themes/hacking.html[script for
  combining the CSS files] into single CSS theme files for AsciiDoc
  embedded CSS documents.
- Ilya Portnov has written a
  https://gitorious.org/doc-building-system[document building system
  for AsciiDoc], here is
  http://iportnov.blogspot.com/2011/03/asciidoc-beamer.html[short
  article in Russian] describing it.
- Lex Trotman has written
  https://github.com/elextr/codiicsa[codiicsa], a program that
  converts DocBook to AsciiDoc.
- Qingping Hou has written http://houqp.github.com/asciidoc-deckjs/[an
  AsciiDoc backend for deck.js].
  http://imakewebthings.github.com/deck.js/[deck.js] is a JavaScript
  library for building modern HTML presentations (slideshows).
- The guys from O'Reilly Media have posted an
  https://github.com/oreillymedia/docbook2asciidoc[XSL Stylesheet to
github] that converts DocBook to AsciiDoc.
- Lex Trotman has written
  https://github.com/elextr/flexndex[flexndex], an index generator
  tool that be used with AsciiDoc.
- Michael Haberler has created a
  https://code.google.com/p/asciidoc-diag-filter/[blockdiag filter for
  Asciidoc] which embeds http://blockdiag.com/[blockdiag] images in
  AsciiDoc documents.
- Dan Allen has written a
  https://github.com/mojavelinux/asciidoc-bootstrap-docs-backend[Bootstrap
  backend] for AsciiDoc.
- Steven Boscarine has written
  https://github.com/StevenBoscarine/JavaAsciidocWrapper[Maven wrapper for AsciiDoc].
- Christian Goltz has written
  https://github.com/christiangoltz/shaape[Shaape], an Ascii art to
  image converter for AsciiDoc.
- Eduardo Santana has written an
  https://github.com/edusantana/asciidoc-highlight[Asciidoc Highlight
  for Notepad++].
- http://www.geany.org/[Geany] 1.23 adds document structure support
  for AsciiDoc.

Please let me know if any of these links need updating.


[[X6]]
Documents written using AsciiDoc
--------------------------------
Here are some documents I know of, if you know of more drop me a line
and I'll add them to the list.

- The book http://practicalunittesting.com/[Practical Unit Testing] by
  Tomek Kaczanowski was
  https://groups.google.com/group/asciidoc/browse_frm/thread/4ba13926262efa23[written
  using Asciidoc].

- The book http://oreilly.com/catalog/9781449397296[Programming iOS 4]
  by Matt Neuburg was written using AsciiDoc. Matt has
  http://www.apeth.net/matt/iosbooktoolchain.html[written an article]
  describing how he used AsciiDoc and other tools to write the book.

- The book
  http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596155957/index.html[Programming
  Scala] by Dean Wampler and Alex Payne (O'Reilly) was
  http://groups.google.com/group/asciidoc/browse_frm/thread/449f1199343f0e27[written
  using Asciidoc].

- The http://www.ncfaculty.net/dogle/fishR/index.html[fishR] website
  has a number of
  http://www.ncfaculty.net/dogle/fishR/bookex/AIFFD/AIFFD.html[book
  examples] written using AsciiDoc.

- The Neo4j graph database project uses Asciidoc, and the output is
  published here: http://docs.neo4j.org/. The build process includes
  live tested source code snippets and is described
  http://groups.google.com/group/asciidoc/browse_thread/thread/49d570062fd3ff52[here].

- http://frugalware.org/[Frugalware Linux] uses AsciiDoc for
  http://frugalware.org/docs[documentation].
- http://www.cherokee-project.com/doc/[Cherokee documentation].

- Henrik Maier produced this professional User manual using AsciiDoc:
  http://www.proconx.com/assets/files/products/modg100/UMMBRG300-1101.pdf

- Henrik also produced this folded single page brochure format
  example:
  http://www.proconx.com/assets/files/products/modg100/IGMBRG300-1101-up.pdf
+
See this
http://groups.google.com/group/asciidoc/browse_thread/thread/16ab5a06864b934f[AsciiDoc
discussion group thread] for details.

- The
  http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/user-manual.html[Git
  User's Manual].
- 'Git Magic' +
  http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~blynn/gitmagic/ +
  http://github.com/blynn/gitmagic/tree/1e5780f658962f8f9b01638059b27275cfda095c
- 'CouchDB: The Definitive Guide' +
  http://books.couchdb.org/relax/ +
  http://groups.google.com/group/asciidoc/browse_thread/thread/a60f67cbbaf862aa/d214bf7fa2d538c4?lnk=gst&q=book#d214bf7fa2d538c4
- 'Ramaze Manual' +
  http://book.ramaze.net/ +
  http://github.com/manveru/ramaze-book/tree/master
- Some documentation about git by Nico Schottelius (in German)
  http://nico.schotteli.us/papers/linux/git-firmen/.
- The http://www.netpromi.com/kirbybase_ruby.html[KirbyBase for Ruby]
  database management system manual.
- The http://xpt.sourceforge.net/[*Nix Power Tools project] uses
  AsciiDoc for documentation.
- The http://www.wesnoth.org/[Battle for Wesnoth] project uses
  AsciiDoc for its http://www.wesnoth.org/wiki/WesnothManual[Manual]
  in a number of different languages.
- Troy Hanson uses AsciiDoc to generate user guides for the
  http://tpl.sourceforge.net/[tpl] and
  http://uthash.sourceforge.net/[uthash] projects (the HTML versions
  have a customised contents sidebar).
- http://volnitsky.com/[Leonid Volnitsky's site] is generated using
  AsciiDoc and includes Leonid's matplotlib filter.
- http://www.weechat.org/[WeeChat] uses AsciiDoc for
  http://www.weechat.org/doc[project documentation].
- http://www.clansuite.com/[Clansuite] uses AsciiDoc for
  http://www.clansuite.com/documentation/[project documentation].
- The http://fc-solve.berlios.de/[Freecell Solver program] uses
  AsciiDoc for its
  http://fc-solve.berlios.de/docs/#distributed-docs[distributed
  documentation].
- Eric Raymond's http://gpsd.berlios.de/AIVDM.html[AIVDM/AIVDO
  protocol decoding] documentation is written using AsciiDoc.
- Dwight Schauer has written an http://lxc.teegra.net/[LXC HOWTO] in
  AsciiDoc.
- The http://www.rowetel.com/ucasterisk/[Free Telephony Project]
  website is generated using AsciiDoc.
- Warren Block has http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/[posted a
  number of articles written using AsciiDoc].
- The http://code.google.com/p/waf/[Waf project's] 'Waf Book' is
  written using AsciiDoc, there is an
  http://waf.googlecode.com/svn/docs/wafbook/single.html[HTML] and a
  http://waf.googlecode.com/svn/docs/wafbook/waf.pdf[PDF] version.
- The http://www.diffkit.org/[DiffKit] project's documentation and
  website have been written using Asciidoc.
- The http://www.networkupstools.org[Network UPS Tools] project
  http://www.networkupstools.org/documentation.html[documentation] is
  an example of a large documentation project written using AsciiDoc.
- http://www.archlinux.org/pacman/[Pacman], the
  http://www.archlinux.org/[Arch Linux] package manager, has been
  documented using AsciiDoc.
- Suraj Kurapati has written a number of customized manuals for his
  Open Source projects using AsciiDoc:

  * http://snk.tuxfamily.org/lib/detest/
  * http://snk.tuxfamily.org/lib/ember/
  * http://snk.tuxfamily.org/lib/inochi/
  * http://snk.tuxfamily.org/lib/rumai/

- The http://cxxtest.com/[CxxTest] project (unit testing for C++
  language) has written its User Guide using AsciiDoc.

Please let me know if any of these links need updating.


DocBook 5.0 Backend
-------------------
Shlomi Fish has begun work on a DocBook 5.0 `docbook50.conf` backend
configuration file, you can find it
http://bitbucket.org/shlomif/asciidoc[here]. See also:
http://groups.google.com/group/asciidoc/browse_thread/thread/4386c7cc053d51a9


[[X1]]
LaTeX Backend
-------------
An experimental LaTeX backend was written for AsciiDoc in 2006 by
Benjamin Klum.  Benjamin did a superhuman job (I admit it, I didn't
think this was doable due to AsciiDoc's SGML/XML bias).  Owning to to
other commitments, Benjamin was unable to maintain this backend.
Here's link:latex-backend.html[Benjamin's original documentation].
Incompatibilities introduced after AsciiDoc 8.2.7 broke the LaTeX
backend.

In 2009 Geoff Eddy stepped up and updated the LaTeX backend, thanks to
Geoff's efforts it now works with AsciiDoc 8.4.3. Geoff's updated
`latex.conf` file shipped with AsciiDoc version 8.4.4. The backend
still has limitations and remains experimental (see
link:latex-bugs.html[Geoff's notes]).

It's probably also worth pointing out that LaTeX output can be
generated by passing AsciiDoc generated DocBook through `dblatex(1)`.


Patches and bug reports
-----------------------
Patches and bug reports are are encouraged, but please try to follow
these guidelines:

- Post bug reports and patches to the
  http://groups.google.com/group/asciidoc[asciidoc discussion list],
  this keeps things transparent and gives everyone a chance to
  comment.
- The email subject line should be a specific and concise topic
  summary. Commonly accepted subject line prefixes such as '[ANN]',
  '[PATCH]' and '[SOLVED]' are good.

=== Bug reports
- When reporting problems please illustrate the problem with the
  smallest possible example that replicates the issue (and please test
  your example before posting). This technique will also help to
  eliminate red herrings prior to posting.
- Paste the commands that you executed along with any relevant
  outputs.
- Include the version of AsciiDoc and the platform you're running it
  on.
- If you can program please consider writing a patch to fix the
  problem.

=== Patches
- Keep patches small and atomic (one issue per patch) -- no patch
  bombs.
- If possible test your patch against the current trunk.
- If your patch adds or modifies functionality include a short example
  that illustrates the changes.
- Send patches in `diff -u` format, inline inside the mail message is
  usually best; if it is a very long patch then send it as an
  attachment.
- Include documentation updates if you're up to it; otherwise insert
  'TODO' comments at relevant places in the documentation.