AsciiDoc Frequently Asked Questions

AsciiDoc has a built-in trace mechanism which is controlled by the trace attribute; there is also the --verbose command-line option. These features are detailed in Appendix G of the User Guide.

This is the response to a question posted on the AsciiDoc discussion list, it illustrates a number of useful techniques. The question arose because the source highlight filter language identifier for the C++ language is c++ when generating PDF’s via dblatex (LaTeX listings package) or cpp when generating HTML (GNU source-highlight).

Using straight ifdef::[] block macros we have:

This can be shortened using the short form of the ifdef::[] macro:

Using a conditional attribute instead of the ifdef::[] macro is even shorter:

If you have a number of listings it makes sense to factor the conditional attribute to a normal attribute:

Even shorter, set the default source highlight filter language attribute so you don’t have to specify it every time:

Most likely the passthrough encloses another passthrough with a higher precedence. For example trying to render this pass:[] with this `pass:[]` results in a blank string because the pass:[] passthrough evaluates first, instead use monspaced quoting and escape the passthrough i.e. +\pass:[]+

You can’t use a BlockId block element inside a list but you can use the syntactically identical anchor inline macro. For example:

This will not work:

If you place two lists with different syntax hard up against each other then the second list will be nested in the first. If you don’t want the second list to be nested separate them with a comment line block macro. For example:

There are a number of programs available that generate presentation charts from textual specification, for example Pychart is a library for writing chart scripts in Python. Here’s an example from the Pychart documentation:

To execute the script and include the generated chart image in your document add the following lines to the AsciiDoc source:

To unconditionally indent all paragraphs add the following line to the xhtml11.css stylesheet (or a custom stylesheet).

This will restyle the entire document by indenting all paragraphs which is normally what you want to do (mixed paragraph styles produce ugly documents).

To selectively indent paragraphs with the indented style add the following line to the xhtml11.css stylesheet (or a custom stylesheet).

Then apply the indented style to normal paragraphs, for example:

You can set the height and width attributes globally in your document with Attribute Entries or from the command-line using the --attribute option. In the following example images that don’t explicitly set the height and width values will be 350 by 250 pixels.

Use the predefined {backslash} attribute reference instead of an actual backslash, for example if the {projectname} attribute has the value foobar then:

would be rendered as:

Most AsciiDoc inline elements can be suppressed by preceding them with a backslash character. These elements include:

But there are exceptions — see the next question.

There are a number of exceptions to the usual single backslash rule — mostly relating to URL macros that have two syntaxes or quoting ambiguity. Here are some non-standard escape examples:

The source of this problem is ambiguity across substitution types — the first match unescapes allowing the second to substitute. A work-around for difficult cases is to side-step the problem using the pass:[] passthrough inline macro.

You can set the element’s style entry in a global or custom configuration file.

This example this will horizontally style all labeled lists that don’t have an explicit style attribute:

This example will put a top and bottom border on all tables that don’t already have an explicit style attribute:

Alternatively you can set the configuration entries from inside your document, the above examples are equivalent to:

An error was returned when AsciiDoc tried to execute an external filter command. The most common reason for this is that the filter command could not be found by the command shell. To figure out what the problem is run AsciiDoc with the --verbose option to determine the command that is failing and then try to run the command manually from the command-line.

Yelp, the GNOME help viewer, does a creditable job of displaying DocBook files XML files directly. Just run it from the command-line, for example:

Note that you have to supply the full path name in URI format, this shell script makes interactive use easier:

This tip was submitted by Lionel Orry.

The easiest and highest fidelity methods I’ve seen is to generate HTML from AsciiDoc then paste it from your browser (we use Firefox) into OpenOffice Writer.

This tip was contributed by Bernard Amade.

Use the {include:} system attribute instead of the include::[] macro (the former is not expanded until after the table data has been parsed into cells, whereas the latter is included before the table is processed.

Apply the The verse paragraph style, the rendered text preserves line boundaries and is useful for lyrics and poems. For example:

Alternatively, if you are generating PDF files (using FOP) or HTML files, you can use line breaks. For example:

Use the non-breaking space character entity reference   (see the next question). You could also use the predefined {nbsp} attribute reference.

Yes, just enter the reference in your document. For example β will print a Greek small beta character β

URL inline macro targets (addresses) cannot contain white space characters. If you need spaces encode them as %20. For example:

Set the AsciiDoc lang attribute to the appropriate language code. For example:

This will ensure that downstream DocBook processing will generate the correct language specific document headings (things like table of contents, revision history, figure and table captions, admonition captions).

This is normally because there are more than three names (up to three are expected: first name, middle name and last name). For example, this author line would result in an error:

You can enter multi-word first, middle and last names in the author line using the underscore as a word separator. For example:

You could also resolve the problem by replacing the author line with explicit attribute entries:

A quick way to do this is put both authors in a single first name, for example:

asciidoc(1) replaces the underscores with spaces.

The longer, semantically correct, way is to override the [header] configuration file section in a document specific .conf file. For example if your document is mydoc.txt then a file called mydoc.conf in the document directory would be picked up automatically by asciidoc(1). Copy and paste the default docbook.conf file [header] to mydoc.conf and modify the author related markup:

Two colons or semicolons in a paragraph may be confused with a labeled list entry. Use the predefined {two_colons} and {two_semicolons} to suppress this behavior, for example:

Will be rendered as:

Qui in magna commodo:: est labitur dolorum an. Est ne magna primis adolescens.

Omitting the tag name will disable quoting. For example, if you don’t want superscripts or subscripts then put the following in a custom configuration file or edit the global asciidoc.conf configuration file:

Alternatively you can set the configuration entries from within your document, the above examples are equivalent to:

The default format for the {localdate} attribute is the ISO 8601 yyyy-mm-dd format. You can change this format by explicitly setting the {localdate} attribute. For example by setting it using the asciidoc(1) -a command-line option:

You could also set it by adding an Attribute Entry to your souce document, for example:

Since it’s set using an executable attribute you’ll also need to include the --unsafe option when you run asciidoc).

The reason it’s not in the distribution is that DocBook does not have provision for strike through text and one of the AsciiDoc design goals is that AsciiDoc markup should strive to be applicable to all output formats.

Strike through is normally used to mark deleted text — a more comprehensive way to manage document revisions is to use a version control system such as Subversion. You can also use the AsciiDoc CommentLines and CommentBlocks to retain revised text in the source document.

If you really need strike through text for (X)HTML outputs then adding the following to a configuration file will allow you to quote strike through text with hyphen characters:

The User Guide has some. You could also look at ./doc/main.aap in the AsciiDoc distribution, it has all the commands used to build the AsciiDoc documentation (even if you don’t use A-A-P you’ll still find it useful).

<simpara> is really the same as <para> except it can’t contain block elements — this matches, more closely, the AsciiDoc paragraph semantics.

By default only specialcharacters and callouts are substituted in listing blocks; you can add quotes substitutions by explicitly setting the block subs attribute, for example:

The -al will rendered bold. Note that:

Internally the include1 macro is translated to the include1 system attribute which means it must be evaluated in a region where attribute substitution is enabled. include1 won’t work, for example, in a ListingBlock (unless attribute substitution is enabled). include1 is intended for use in configuration files, use the include macro and set the attribute depth=1 instead, for example:

There are a number of dblatex XSL parameters that can be used to customize PDF output. You can set them globally in the AsciiDoc ./dblatex/asciidoc-dblatex.xsl configuration file or you can also pass them on the a2x(1) command-line, for example:

See also the dblatex documentation.

For the AsciiDoc mailto macro to work with multiple email addresses (as per RFC2368) you need to URL encode the @ characters (replace them with %40), if you don’t the individual addresses will be rendered as separate links. You also need to replace spaces with %20.

For example, the following call won’t work:

Use this instead:

Quote the entry name — this nonsensical example replaces x\ with y:

If quoting were omitted the equals character (separating the entry name x from the value y) would be escaped.