1. Is it possible to include charts in AsciiDoc documents?
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:
barchart.py
#
# Example bar chart (from Pychart documentation http://home.gna.org/pychart/).
#
from pychart import *
theme.get_options()
data = [(10, 20, 30, 5), (20, 65, 33, 5), (30, 55, 30, 5), (40, 45, 51, 7),
(50, 25, 27, 3), (60, 75, 30, 5), (70, 80, 42, 5), (80, 62, 32, 5),
(90, 42, 39, 5), (100, 32, 39, 4)]
# The attribute y_coord=... tells that the Y axis values
# should be taken from samples.
# In this example, Y values will be [40,50,60,70,80].
ar = area.T(y_coord = category_coord.T(data[3:8], 0),
x_grid_style=line_style.gray50_dash1,
x_grid_interval=20, x_range = (0,100),
x_axis=axis.X(label="X label"),
y_axis=axis.Y(label="Y label"),
bg_style = fill_style.gray90,
border_line_style = line_style.default,
legend = legend.T(loc=(80,10)))
# Below call sets the default attributes for all bar plots.
chart_object.set_defaults(bar_plot.T, direction="horizontal", data=data)
# Attribute cluster=(0,3) tells that you are going to draw three bar
# plots side by side. The plot labeled "foo" will the leftmost (i.e.,
# 0th out of 3). Attribute hcol tells the column from which to
# retrive sample values from. It defaults to one.
ar.add_plot(bar_plot.T(label="foo", cluster=(0,3)))
ar.add_plot(bar_plot.T(label="bar", hcol=2, cluster=(1,3)))
ar.add_plot(bar_plot.T(label="baz", hcol=3, cluster=(2,3)))
ar.draw()
To execute the script and include the generated chart image in your
document add the following lines to the AsciiDoc source:
You need to run asciidoc(1) with the --unsafe command-line
option to execute the sys2 system macro.
2. How can I render indented paragraphs?
To unconditionally indent all paragraphs add the following line to the
xhtml11.css stylesheet (or a custom stylesheet).
div.paragraph p {text-indent: 3em;}
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).
div.paragraph.indented p {text-indent: 3em;}
Then apply the indented style to normal paragraphs, for example:
[indented]
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Maecenas
ultrices justo porttitor augue. Vestibulum pretium. Donec porta
vestibulum mi. Aliquam pede. Aenean lobortis lorem et lacus. Sed
lacinia. Vivamus at lectus.
This FAQ applies to XHTML output not DocBook. To achieve the
same results with DocBook you would need to customize the DocBook XSL
stylesheets to indent paragraphs with the simpara element
role="indented" attribute.
3. Is there a way to set default image height and width attributes?
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.
:height: 250
:width: 350
image:images/tiger.png[]
4. How can I place a backslash character in front of an attribute reference without escaping the reference?
Use the predefined {backslash} attribute reference instead of an
actual backslash, for example if the {projectname} attribute has
the value foobar then:
d:\data{backslash}{projectname}
would be rendered as:
d:\data\foobar
5. How can I escape AsciiDoc markup?
Most AsciiDoc inline elements can be suppressed by preceding them with
a backslash character. These elements include:
Attribute references.
Text formatting.
Quoting,
Macros.
Replacements.
Special words.
Table cell separators.
But there are exceptions — see the next question.
6. Some elements can’t be escaped with a single backslash
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:
A C+\+ Library for C++
A C+\+ Library for C+\+ \+++
\\``double-quotes''
\*\*F**ile Open...
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.
7. How can I set default list and tables styles?
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:
8. Why do I get a filter non-zero exit code error?
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.
9. Are there any DocBook viewers?
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:
$ yelp file://home/srackham/tmp/book.xml
Note that you have to supply the full path name in URI format, this
shell script makes interactive use easier:
#!/bin/sh
if [ -z "$1" ]; then
echo "usage: dbkview FILE"
exit 1
fi
yelp "file://$(pwd)/$1"
This tip was submitted by Lionel Orry.
10. Can you create ODF documents using AsciiDoc?
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.
I found that that there is better fidelity pasting HTML generated by
the html4 backend instead of the default xhtml11 backend.
Don’t paste AsciiDoc tables of contents, OpenOffice Writer (I was
using version 2.3) hangs when saving. This may be something to do
with the embedded JavaScript but I haven’t looked closely at it, I
may even be wrong about this.
This tip was contributed by Bernard Amade.
11. How can I supress cell separators in included table data files?
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.
12. How can I preserve paragraph line boundaries?
Apply the The verse paragraph style, the rendered text preserves
line boundaries and is useful for lyrics and poems. For example:
[verse]
Consul *necessitatibus* per id,
consetetur, eu pro everti postulant
homero verear ea mea, qui.
If you are generating PDF files (using FOP) or HTML files then you can
use line breaks. For example:
Consul *necessitatibus* per id, +
consetetur, eu pro everti postulant +
homero verear ea mea, qui.
13. How can I include non-breaking space characters?
The predefined {nbsp} attribute reference will be replaced by a
non-breaking space character. You could also use the non-breaking
space character entity reference   (see the next question).
14. Can I include HTML and XML character entity references in my document?
Yes, just enter the reference in your document. For example β
will print a Greek small beta character β
15. How do I include spaces in URLs?
URL inline macro targets (addresses) cannot contain white space
characters. If you need spaces encode them as %20. For example:
16. How can I get AsciiDoc to assign the correct DocBook language attribute?
Set the AsciiDoclang attribute to the appropriate language code.
For example:
$ a2x -a lang=es doc/article.txt
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).
17. Why does AsciiDoc give me a “malformed author” error?
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:
Vincent Willem van Gogh
You can enter multi-word first, middle and last names in the author
line using the underscore as a word separator. For example:
Vincent Willem van_Gogh
You could also resolve the problem by replacing the author line with
explicit attribute entries:
:First name: Vincent
:Middle name: Willem
:Last name: Van Gogh
18. How can I assign multiple author names?
A quick way to do this is put both authors in a single first name, for
example:
My Document
===========
:Author: Bill_and_Ben_the_Flowerpot_Men
:Author Initials: BB & BC
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:
[header]
:
<authorgroup>...
:
19. How can I escape a labeled list entry?
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:
Qui in magna commodo{two_colons} est labitur dolorum an. Est ne
magna primis adolescens.
Will be rendered as:
Qui in magna commodo:: est labitur dolorum an. Est ne
magna primis adolescens.
20. How can I selectively disable a quoted text substitution?
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:
[quotes]
^=
~=
Alternatively you can set the configuration entries from within your
document, the above examples are equivalent to:
:quotes.^:
:quotes.~:
21. How can I customize the {localdate} format?
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:
$ asciidoc -a localdate=`date +%d-%d-%Y` mydoc.txt
You could also set it by adding an Attribute Entry to your souce
document, for example:
:localdate: {sys: date +%Y-%m-%d}
Since it’s set using an executable attribute you’ll also need to
include the --unsafe option when you run asciidoc).
22. Why doesn’t AsciiDoc support strike through text?
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 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 AsciiDocCommentLines 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:
23. Where can I find examples of commands used to build output documents?
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).
24. Why have you used the DocBook <simpara> element instead of <para>?
<simpara> is really the same as <para> except it can’t contain
block elements — this matched, more closely, the AsciiDoc paragraph
semantics.
25. How can I format text inside a listing block?
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:
[subs="quotes"]
------------------------------------------
$ ls *-al*
------------------------------------------
The -al will rendered bold. Note that:
You would need to explicitly escape text you didn’t want quoted.
Don’t do this in source code listing blocks because it modifies the
source code which confuses the syntax highlighter.
This only works if your DocBook processor recognizes DocBook
<emphasis> elements inside <screen> elements.
26. Why doesn’t the include1::[] macro work?
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:
27. How can I customize PDF files generated by dblatex?
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:
a2x -f pdf --dblatex-opts "-P latex.output.revhistory=0" doc/article.txt
28. How can I make the mailto macro work with multiple email addresses?
For the AsciiDocmailto 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.