Asciidoctor vs Markdown

Overview

Markdown

Stacks22.2K

Followers16.5K

Votes960

Asciidoctor

Stacks154

Followers66

Votes2

GitHub Stars0

Forks0

Asciidoctor vs Markdown: What are the differences?

Asciidoctor and Markdown are both lightweight markup languages that are widely used for writing content for websites and documentation. While they have some similarities, there are several key differences between the two.

1. Extension Support: Asciidoctor allows for more extensive extension support compared to Markdown. It has a large ecosystem of plugins and extensions that enable additional functionalities and customization options, such as support for tables, diagrams, and mathematical equations.

2. Document Structure: Asciidoctor provides a more structured approach to document formatting compared to Markdown. It allows for the creation of sections, chapters, and subsections with ease, offering a hierarchical document structure. Markdown, on the other hand, relies more on simple and flat document structure without built-in support for hierarchical organization.

3. Complex Formatting: Asciidoctor offers more complex formatting options compared to Markdown. It provides advanced features like the ability to define custom styles, footnotes, cross-references, and page breaks. Markdown, on the other hand, focuses on simplicity and provides limited formatting options, primarily for basic text styling and lists.

4. Toolchain Integration: Asciidoctor has extensive toolchain integration capabilities, allowing seamless integration with other tools and services for automated workflows. It supports the use of build systems, continuous integration, and documentation generators. Markdown, on the other hand, has more limited toolchain integrations, mainly being used as a source format for static site generators and lightweight editing tools.

5. Output Formats: Asciidoctor provides a broader range of output formats compared to Markdown. It can generate output in various formats such as HTML, PDF, EPUB, and DocBook. Markdown, by default, is primarily focused on generating HTML output, although some extensions and converters exist to generate other formats.

6. Syntax Complexity: Asciidoctor has a more complex syntax compared to Markdown. It offers more flexibility and features that require a steeper learning curve, such as attribute customization and macro expansion. Markdown, on the other hand, emphasizes simplicity and ease of use with a straightforward syntax that can be quickly grasped by beginners.

In Summary, while both Asciidoctor and Markdown serve as lightweight markup languages, Asciidoctor provides more extensive extension support, a structured document format, complex formatting options, better toolchain integration, broader output format support, and a more complex syntax compared to Markdown.

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Advice on Markdown, Asciidoctor

Rick

founder at Webcompose.ca

May 8, 2020

Needs adviceon

GitHub

Markdown

npm

I am a newbie to StackShare and the GitHub community. I want to understand how to use an include statement to get a collection of Markdown files to create a book. I have been told that there are a number of useful tools. My problem is that npm and Node.js are also very new to me. Any suggestions on how to get my md chapters into a printable document would be helpful.

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Comments

Detailed Comparison

Markdown	Asciidoctor
Markdown is two things: (1) a plain text formatting syntax; and (2) a software tool, written in Perl, that converts the plain text formatting to HTML.	It is a fast, open source text processor and publishing toolchain for converting AsciiDoc content to HTML5, DocBook, PDF, and other formats. Asciidoctor is written in Ruby and runs on all major operating systems
-	Lightweight markup language for authoring notes; Articles; Documentation; Books, web pages, slide decks and man pages in plain text.
Statistics
GitHub Stars -	GitHub Stars 0
GitHub Forks -	GitHub Forks 0
Stacks 22.2K	Stacks 154
Followers 16.5K	Followers 66
Votes 960	Votes 2
Pros & Cons
Pros 345 Easy formatting 246 Widely adopted 194 Intuitive 132 Github integration 41 Great for note taking Cons 2 Cannot centralise (HTML code needed) 1 Limited syntax 1 Inconsistend flavours eg github, reddit, mmd etc 1 Unable to indent tables 1 No underline	Pros 1 Versatile 1 GitHub integration 0 Easy fornatting
Integrations
No integrations available	Java JavaScript GitHub Ruby Gradle HTML5 Apache Maven JRuby

What are some alternatives to Markdown, Asciidoctor?

JavaScript

JavaScript is most known as the scripting language for Web pages, but used in many non-browser environments as well such as node.js or Apache CouchDB. It is a prototype-based, multi-paradigm scripting language that is dynamic,and supports object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles.

Python

Python is a general purpose programming language created by Guido Van Rossum. Python is most praised for its elegant syntax and readable code, if you are just beginning your programming career python suits you best.

PHP

Fast, flexible and pragmatic, PHP powers everything from your blog to the most popular websites in the world.

Ruby

Ruby is a language of careful balance. Its creator, Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto, blended parts of his favorite languages (Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada, and Lisp) to form a new language that balanced functional programming with imperative programming.

Java

Java is a programming language and computing platform first released by Sun Microsystems in 1995. There are lots of applications and websites that will not work unless you have Java installed, and more are created every day. Java is fast, secure, and reliable. From laptops to datacenters, game consoles to scientific supercomputers, cell phones to the Internet, Java is everywhere!

Golang

Go is expressive, concise, clean, and efficient. Its concurrency mechanisms make it easy to write programs that get the most out of multicore and networked machines, while its novel type system enables flexible and modular program construction. Go compiles quickly to machine code yet has the convenience of garbage collection and the power of run-time reflection. It's a fast, statically typed, compiled language that feels like a dynamically typed, interpreted language.

HTML5

HTML5 is a core technology markup language of the Internet used for structuring and presenting content for the World Wide Web. As of October 2014 this is the final and complete fifth revision of the HTML standard of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The previous version, HTML 4, was standardised in 1997.

C#

C# (pronounced "See Sharp") is a simple, modern, object-oriented, and type-safe programming language. C# has its roots in the C family of languages and will be immediately familiar to C, C++, Java, and JavaScript programmers.

Scala

Scala is an acronym for “Scalable Language”. This means that Scala grows with you. You can play with it by typing one-line expressions and observing the results. But you can also rely on it for large mission critical systems, as many companies, including Twitter, LinkedIn, or Intel do. To some, Scala feels like a scripting language. Its syntax is concise and low ceremony; its types get out of the way because the compiler can infer them.

Elixir

Elixir leverages the Erlang VM, known for running low-latency, distributed and fault-tolerant systems, while also being successfully used in web development and the embedded software domain.

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Asciidoctor vs Markdown: What are the differences?

Asciidoctor vs Markdown

Overview