Introduction

About AsciiDoc

AsciiDoc is a lightweight markup language for writing document, articles, books.

Compare with other lightweight markup language, for example — markdown, Asciidoc provides more powerful markup semantics such as tables, footnotes, cross-references. Richer built-in semantics can reduce the differences between different programs when working with documents.

Here is a AsciiDoc example:

= Hello, AsciiDoc!
Doc Writer <doc@example.com>

An introduction to http://asciidoc.org[AsciiDoc].

== First Section

* item 1
* item 2

[source,ruby]
puts "Hello, World!"

Read https://asciidoctor.org/docs/asciidoc-syntax-quick-reference/ for more AsciiDoc syntax.

Difference between Asciibook and Asciidoctor

Asciidoctor is a toolchain for converting AsciiDoc content to many formats. Asciibook focuses on several formats related to books: HTML, PDF, EPUB and MOBI.

Asciibook relies on Asciidoctor to parse asciidoc documents, but uses its own converter. In a sense, asciibook is an asciidoctor coverter with its own preferences.

For example, Asciibook uses wkhtmltopdf to generate pdfs from html, and Asciidoctor directly generates pdfs. Asciibook’s processing makes the resulting PDF style almost the same as other formats.

Asciibook also provides a consistent way to style ebooks.

E-book Formats

Asciibook supports major e-book formats:

HTML

Can be deployed as a static website.

PDF

Can be read by most devices.

EPUB

Can be read by most E-book reader, like Google Boook, iBook.

MOBI

Can be read by Kindle.

Version Control

Because asciidoc is plain text, it can be well managed by version management tools.

You can store documents via GitHub, collaborate with pull-request, and publish via Github Pages.

CI/CD

Asciibook works on the command line, so it can be used with existing CI / CD services such as GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, and more.

Read Automation section for more infomation.

Open Source

Asciibook is release under MIT License.