3 ms·

How does AsciiDoctor compare to Pandoc? Based on the AsciiDoctor hype page it seems to describe the same features Pandoc offers.

phalangion 8y ago
Pandoc and AsciiDoctor are fairly similar in their purpose. Pandoc aims to provide conversion between a bunch of different formats, while AsciiDoctor primarily focuses on the AsciiDoc format, a "competitor" for markdown. I prefer AsciiDoc over Markdown because it is just a bit more robust. While both are equally simple to use for the most common use cases of marking up a document and adding bold, italics, headings, and code snippets, AsciiDoc has features to add figure captions, cross references, and other slightly more robust features that I use for a lot of my writing.
- sirsuki 8y ago
  Oh believe me I love AsciiDoc. I would use it all the time if half the tools out there would support it. Sadly, as it stands most forums and chat apps still think Markdown is the only format ever to be invented.
mr_tristan 8y ago
Eh, I'd say they're pretty different goals and use cases in reality. Pandoc is great for translation into other formats, where the other format then is applied final styling using downstream tools. AsciiDoctor is for the Asciidoc format, but, generally includes some nice tooling for commonly used output formats. Yes, you can use pandoc to convert asciidoc to something else, but in general, I've noticed that asciidoctor has great support for HTML themes: https://asciidoctor.org/docs/produce-custom-themes-using-asciidoctor-stylesheet-factory/ https://asciidoctor.org/docs/produce-custom-themes-using-asc... https://github.com/darshandsoni/asciidoctor-skins https://github.com/darshandsoni/asciidoctor-skins The PDF styling directly out of the asciidoctor tool, on the other hand, isn't as advanced. So going from asciidoc to DocBook can make sense here, and I think is probably still done to do things like create truly professional looking PDFs. What to use? Depends on your toolchain. I almost never need anything but HTML and PDF. I've found that people, used to Markdown, can jump into Asciidoc and use `asciidoctor` easily.

phalangion 8y ago

Pandoc and AsciiDoctor are fairly similar in their purpose. Pandoc aims to provide conversion between a bunch of different formats, while AsciiDoctor primarily focuses on the AsciiDoc format, a "competitor" for markdown. I prefer AsciiDoc over Markdown because it is just a bit more robust. While both are equally simple to use for the most common use cases of marking up a document and adding bold, italics, headings, and code snippets, AsciiDoc has features to add figure captions, cross references, and other slightly more robust features that I use for a lot of my writing.

sirsuki 8y ago
Oh believe me I love AsciiDoc. I would use it all the time if half the tools out there would support it. Sadly, as it stands most forums and chat apps still think Markdown is the only format ever to be invented.

mr_tristan 8y ago

Eh, I'd say they're pretty different goals and use cases in reality. Pandoc is great for translation into other formats, where the other format then is applied final styling using downstream tools. AsciiDoctor is for the Asciidoc format, but, generally includes some nice tooling for commonly used output formats. Yes, you can use pandoc to convert asciidoc to something else, but in general, I've noticed that asciidoctor has great support for HTML themes: https://asciidoctor.org/docs/produce-custom-themes-using-asciidoctor-stylesheet-factory/ https://asciidoctor.org/docs/produce-custom-themes-using-asc... https://github.com/darshandsoni/asciidoctor-skins https://github.com/darshandsoni/asciidoctor-skins The PDF styling directly out of the asciidoctor tool, on the other hand, isn't as advanced. So going from asciidoc to DocBook can make sense here, and I think is probably still done to do things like create truly professional looking PDFs. What to use? Depends on your toolchain. I almost never need anything but HTML and PDF. I've found that people, used to Markdown, can jump into Asciidoc and use `asciidoctor` easily.