4 ms·

The worst part of AsciiDoc I think is its name. It sounds so archaic.

rm445 5y ago
It does tend to make one worry that all the tools will be hideously un-unicode aware and mangle any non-ASCII documents. I would like to imagine that in this day and age that isn't the case, but the name works against it.
- oneeyedpigeon 5y ago
  Particularly when the syntax bakes in things like support for converting certain ASCII sequences into Unicode characters [0] [0] https://docs.asciidoctor.org/asciidoc/latest/text/quotation-marks-and-apostrophes/ https://docs.asciidoctor.org/asciidoc/latest/text/quotation-...
  - bloak 5y ago
    Yes, I finally got around to adding some "quail" stuff to my .emacs so that I can directly type various kinds of quotation mark and dash rather than rely on complex conversion rules that sometimes go wrong. The lack of first-class support for balanced quotation marks seems to be a major problem for computers. I think a lot of computer code, particularly scripts, would be easier to read and less buggy if the languages had been designed by someone with balanced quotation marks on their keyboard. As a thought experiment, imagine what Lisp would look like if '(' and ')' were the same character and you had to use the same work-arounds that shell scripts use for open quotation mark and close quotation mark being the same character. Instead of (a ((b c) d)) we'd write |a \|\\\|b c\\\| d\||. That's fine, right? We can live with that? Perhaps we should think ourselves lucky that 0 and O are not the same character, and 1 and l, like they were on the first mechanical typewriters. Mind you, there's one similar annoyance that predates typewriters and continues to plague us in Unicode: apostrophe and closing single quotation mark are logically quite different things, but they're the same character: ’
    - enriquto 5y ago
      > Yes, I finally got around to adding some "quail" stuff to my .emacs Why into .emacs and not into the global keyboard configuration? Don't you ever write text outside of emacs?
      - bloak 5y ago
        Yes, good question. One reason is that I haven't found a convenient portable way of modifying Linux keyboard configurations. Another is that sometimes I'm SSH-ing in from a machine that isn't even Linux. I have used xkbcomp to replace a character I don't need with one I do, but the recipe tends to require maintenance and I don't know how to program dead keys with that approach. Perhaps there's a better way nowadays.
        enriquto 5y ago
        I was somehow expecting the answer to be: "Yes, I do all my keyboard input from inside emacs, including running the shell". For linux-portable keyboard configuration, you may find that an unholy mix of setxbmap (to set up the grand options) and xmodmap (to modify a few particular keys) is what works best for you. At least it does for me. > sometimes I'm SSH-ing in from a machine that isn't even Linux. ah! the horror!
- joshspankit 5y ago
  Came here to say this. UTF-8/16 represents such a relief from the previous text-encoding nightmares that I run away from any tooling that does not use it. If anyone else was a web dev in the 90s, you know what I’m talking about.
  - MattBlissett 5y ago
    AsciiDoctor supports Unicode just fine. We've integrated it with PO4A[0] and CrowdIn.com to support a translation workflow, and so far have one document in Chinese: [1]. Another (tiny) example is [2] with an emoji star, you can "Edit this page" and see the Unicode source. [0] https://po4a.org/ https://po4a.org/ [1] https://docs.gbif.org/collections-idea-paper/zh/ https://docs.gbif.org/collections-idea-paper/zh/ [2] https://ipt.gbif.org/manual/en/ipt/2.5/data-hosting-centres#data-hosting-centres-by-location https://ipt.gbif.org/manual/en/ipt/2.5/data-hosting-centres#...
    - SAI_Peregrinus 5y ago
      The issue is that the name strongly implies that it doesn't. If a system is named "Doesn'tSupportImportantThingSys" don't be surprised when people don't bother to check the documentation to find that it actually does support the important thing. They'll just skip it.
      - joshspankit 5y ago
        ^ this. ASCII is so old that I picture ANSI colour blocks as it’s successor, and both of those are firmly in the “nightmarish text encoding days”
Finnucane 5y ago
You want archaic? It could be worse. It could be EbcdicDoc.
- nobleach 5y ago
  Wow, using Perl scripts to convert output from my AS/400's DB2 instance into ASCII so that I could import them into Oracle 8i and display them on an ASP page... that was a memory I had hoped to forget.
mikl 5y ago
Yeah, as someone whose name contains non-ASCII characters, the association with ASCII is not exactly a positive one. I’ve wasted so much time dealing with data in non-Unicode encodings over my career that the mere word ASCII makes me want to punch something.

It does tend to make one worry that all the tools will be hideously un-unicode aware and mangle any non-ASCII documents. I would like to imagine that in this day and age that isn't the case, but the name works against it.

oneeyedpigeon 5y ago
Particularly when the syntax bakes in things like support for converting certain ASCII sequences into Unicode characters [0] [0] https://docs.asciidoctor.org/asciidoc/latest/text/quotation-marks-and-apostrophes/ https://docs.asciidoctor.org/asciidoc/latest/text/quotation-...
- bloak 5y ago
  Yes, I finally got around to adding some "quail" stuff to my .emacs so that I can directly type various kinds of quotation mark and dash rather than rely on complex conversion rules that sometimes go wrong. The lack of first-class support for balanced quotation marks seems to be a major problem for computers. I think a lot of computer code, particularly scripts, would be easier to read and less buggy if the languages had been designed by someone with balanced quotation marks on their keyboard. As a thought experiment, imagine what Lisp would look like if '(' and ')' were the same character and you had to use the same work-arounds that shell scripts use for open quotation mark and close quotation mark being the same character. Instead of (a ((b c) d)) we'd write |a \|\\\|b c\\\| d\||. That's fine, right? We can live with that? Perhaps we should think ourselves lucky that 0 and O are not the same character, and 1 and l, like they were on the first mechanical typewriters. Mind you, there's one similar annoyance that predates typewriters and continues to plague us in Unicode: apostrophe and closing single quotation mark are logically quite different things, but they're the same character: ’
  - enriquto 5y ago
    > Yes, I finally got around to adding some "quail" stuff to my .emacs Why into .emacs and not into the global keyboard configuration? Don't you ever write text outside of emacs?
    - bloak 5y ago
      Yes, good question. One reason is that I haven't found a convenient portable way of modifying Linux keyboard configurations. Another is that sometimes I'm SSH-ing in from a machine that isn't even Linux. I have used xkbcomp to replace a character I don't need with one I do, but the recipe tends to require maintenance and I don't know how to program dead keys with that approach. Perhaps there's a better way nowadays.
      - enriquto 5y ago
        I was somehow expecting the answer to be: "Yes, I do all my keyboard input from inside emacs, including running the shell". For linux-portable keyboard configuration, you may find that an unholy mix of setxbmap (to set up the grand options) and xmodmap (to modify a few particular keys) is what works best for you. At least it does for me. > sometimes I'm SSH-ing in from a machine that isn't even Linux. ah! the horror!
joshspankit 5y ago
Came here to say this. UTF-8/16 represents such a relief from the previous text-encoding nightmares that I run away from any tooling that does not use it. If anyone else was a web dev in the 90s, you know what I’m talking about.
- MattBlissett 5y ago
  AsciiDoctor supports Unicode just fine. We've integrated it with PO4A[0] and CrowdIn.com to support a translation workflow, and so far have one document in Chinese: [1]. Another (tiny) example is [2] with an emoji star, you can "Edit this page" and see the Unicode source. [0] https://po4a.org/ https://po4a.org/ [1] https://docs.gbif.org/collections-idea-paper/zh/ https://docs.gbif.org/collections-idea-paper/zh/ [2] https://ipt.gbif.org/manual/en/ipt/2.5/data-hosting-centres#data-hosting-centres-by-location https://ipt.gbif.org/manual/en/ipt/2.5/data-hosting-centres#...
  - SAI_Peregrinus 5y ago
    The issue is that the name strongly implies that it doesn't. If a system is named "Doesn'tSupportImportantThingSys" don't be surprised when people don't bother to check the documentation to find that it actually does support the important thing. They'll just skip it.
    - joshspankit 5y ago
      ^ this. ASCII is so old that I picture ANSI colour blocks as it’s successor, and both of those are firmly in the “nightmarish text encoding days”

Finnucane 5y ago

You want archaic? It could be worse. It could be EbcdicDoc.

nobleach 5y ago
Wow, using Perl scripts to convert output from my AS/400's DB2 instance into ASCII so that I could import them into Oracle 8i and display them on an ASP page... that was a memory I had hoped to forget.

mikl 5y ago

Yeah, as someone whose name contains non-ASCII characters, the association with ASCII is not exactly a positive one. I’ve wasted so much time dealing with data in non-Unicode encodings over my career that the mere word ASCII makes me want to punch something.