AsciiDoc is a text document format for writing notes, documentation, articles, books, ebooks, slideshows, web pages, man pages, and blogs. It’s designed to be human-readable and plain text, but also has a rich set of features for formatting and structuring your text. Here are some key points about AsciiDoc:
Human-Readable Format: AsciiDoc is written in a plain text format, making it easy to read and write without requiring any special software.
Rich Formatting Options: Despite its simple appearance, AsciiDoc supports a wide range of formatting and structuring options, including headings, tables, lists, and more.
Extensible: AsciiDoc is extensible, allowing users to define their own custom attributes, macros, and templates.
Output Formats: Using tools like AsciiDoctor, you can convert AsciiDoc content into many different formats including HTML, PDF, ePub, and DocBook.
Single Source Publishing: Write once, and publish everywhere. With AsciiDoc, you can write your content once in a plain text file, then generate output in many different formats without having to rewrite or reformat your content.
Version Control Friendly: Because it’s a text-based format, AsciiDoc works well with version control systems like Git. This makes it easy to track changes over time, collaborate with others, and manage your writing projects.
Cross-Referencing: AsciiDoc supports advanced cross-referencing of content, making it easy to create complex documents with internal links, footnotes, and bibliographies.
Include Mechanism: You can include content from other AsciiDoc files, making it easy to modularize and manage larger documents or document sets.
Community and Tooling: There’s a strong community around AsciiDoc, and a range of tools and text editors support it.
Compatibility: AsciiDoc is a mature, stable, and well-documented format, which makes it a reliable choice for documentation projects.
AsciiDoc provides a balance between ease of writing (like Markdown) and the ability to create complex, structured documents (like DocBook or LaTeX), making it a popular choice for technical writers, authors, and developers.