[Asciidoctor] is a pure Ruby processor for converting AsciiDoc source files and strings into HTML 5, DocBook 4.5 and other formats.

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 and JRuby 1.7.2 (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 started emerged from the Git SCM site repo. Refer to commit history of asciidoc.rb to view the initial contributions and individual contributors.

The source code can now be found in the Asciidoctor source repository on GitHub.

To install the gem:

Or if you prefer bundler:

To use Asciidoctor in your application, you first need to require the library:

With that in place, you can start processing AsciiDoc documents.

To parse a file into an Asciidoctor::Document object:

You can get information about the document:

More than likely, you want to just render the document.

To render a file containing AsciiDoc markup to HTML 5:

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:

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:

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 declare it as an option:

Now you’ll get a full HTML 5 file. As before, you can also produce DocBook 4.5:

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.

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.

If you don’t like all this Ruby code just to render AsciiDoc, there’s a commandline interface (cli) named asciidoctor. It should be available on your PATH after installing the gem. The asciidoctor command is a drop-in replacement for the asciidoc command from the AsciiDoc Python distribution.

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 is about 20x faster than AsciiDoc).

Here are the known cases where Asciidoctor differs from AsciiDoc:

• In Asciidoctor, safe mode is on by default when using the API (safe mode level SECURE),

• Asciidoctor safe mode is even more safe than AsciiDoc’s safe mode

• Asciidoctor enforces symmetric block delimiters (the length of start and end delimiters for a block must match)

• Section title underlines must be within +/- 1 of the length of the title (AsciiDoc is +/- 3)

• Asciidoctor’s default HTML backend matches AsciiDoc’s HTML 5 backend (whereas XHTML 1.1 is the default HTML backend in AsciiDoc)

• Asciidoctor handles inline anchors more cleanly

  • AsciiDoc adds an <a> tag in the line and that markup gets caught in the generated id

  • Asciidoctor promotes the id of the anchor as the section id

• Asciidoctor strips XML entities from the section title before generating the id (makes for cleaner section ids)

• Asciidoctor use <tt> instead of <span class="monospace"> around inline literal text in the HTML backend

• Asciidoctor is much more lenient about attribute list parsing (double quotes are rarely needed)

• Asciidoctor creates xref labels using the text from the linked section title when rendering HTML to match how DocBook works

• Asciidoctor allows commas to be used in xref labels, whereas AsciiDoc cuts off the label at the location of the first comma

• Asciidoctor removes indentation for non-literal paragraphs in a list item

  • In general, Asciidoctor handles whitespace much more intelligently

• In Asciidoctor, a ruler can have attributes

• Asciidoctor skips over line comments in tables, whereas AsciiDoc does not

• Asciidoctor uses its own API rather than a command line invocation to handle table cells that have AsciiDoc content

• Asciidoctor supports resolving variables from parent document in table cells with AsciiDoc content

• AsciiDoc doesn’t carry over the doctype attribute passed from the commandline when rendering AsciiDoc content cells, whereas Asciidoctor does

• Asciidoctor strips the file extension from the target image when generating alt text if no alt text is provided

• Asciidoctor reifies the toc in the header of the document instead of relying on JavaScript to create it

• Asciidoctor is nice about using a section title syntax inside a delimited block by simply ignoring it (AsciiDoc issues warnings)

• Asciidoctor honors the alternate style name "discrete" for a floating title (i.e., [discrete])

• Asciidoctor supports syntax highlighting of listing or literal blocks that have the "source" style out of the box

  • Asciidoctor honors the source-highlighter values coderay and highlightjs, using CodeRay or highlight.js, respectively

  • Asciidoctor does not currently support Pygments for source highlighting

• Asciidoctor sets these additional intrinsic attributes

  asciidoctor

  indicates Asciidoctor is being used; useful for conditional processing

  asciidoctor-version

  indicates which version of Asciidoctor is in use

• Asciidoctor does not support deprecated tables (you don’t want them anyway)

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:

• by using alpha, beta, and prerelease versions

• by reporting bugs

• by suggesting new features

• by writing or editing documentation

• by writing specifications

• by writing code — No patch is too small.

  • fix typos

  • add comments

  • clean up inconsistent whitespace

  • write tests!

• by refactoring code

• by fixing issues

• 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.

1. Fork the repository.

2. Create a topic branch.

3. Add tests for your unimplemented feature or bug fix.

4. Run bundle exec rake. If your tests pass, return to step 3.

5. Implement your feature or bug fix.

6. Run bundle exec rake. If your tests fail, return to step 5.

7. Add documentation for your feature or bug fix.

8. If your changes are not 100% documented, go back to step 7.

9. Add, commit, and push your changes.

10. Submit a pull request.

This library aims to support the following Ruby implementations:

• Ruby 1.8.7

• Ruby 1.9.3

• JRuby 1.7.2

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.

Copyright © 2012 Ryan Waldron. See LICENSE for details.