I recently switched from *ReStructuredText* to *AsciiDoc* because I prefer the design and syntax of *AsciiDoc*. See that they both aim to do the same I believe in medium terms only one of them will survive. I like *AsciiDoc*and I hope to see that it becomes standard one day.
Please consider that the success of programming (markup) languages, do not only depend on their quality. I. e. Acceptance of programming (markup) languages depends on: 1. The quality of syntax and design. 2. The ease of installing and using the software for the most common use cases. 3. The ease of learning. *1. The quality of syntax and design* AsciiDoc is - in my opinion - much better. *2. The ease of installing and using the software for the most common use cases* *ReStructuredText* covers better the main use cases: An average (newbee, windows) user needs: - asciidoc -> html, - asciidoc -> pdf and - asciidoc -> odt. This should work with a standard installation, no plug-ins, no dependencies, no configuration and no wrapper like a2x. LaTeX and DocBook people are advanced users. They can cope with plug installation and configuration issues, but not the average user, who just tries *asciidoc*maybe because he likes the syntax. @Stuart, you could easily open your software for these clients. Please consider reviewing your plug-in policy. Plug-ins should not reflect the organizational structure of the developers, it should reflect the difference between main use cases of "newbies" and advanced usage of "experts". For this reason html, odt and pdf should be core backends, all the others can be plug-ins. *3. The ease of learning* *AsciiDoc* and *ReStructuredText* are both very well documented. Both have interactive websites where you can test the syntax without installing. Nevertheless *ReStructuredText* wins this point because of a nice little editor named *ReText*. *ReText* is available in most repositories. It has a "live preview" mode making it very easy to learn interactively a new markup language. Maybe it is possible to motivate the *ReText* people to support also *AsciiDoc*? If not an alternative could be to fork an *AsciiDocText*version of *ReText*. It would be really a pity to see *AsciiDoc* disappear, just because * ReStructuredText* becomes standard. Jens * * * * Am Dienstag, 9. Oktober 2012 22:26:52 UTC+2 schrieb Stuart Rackham:Hi Jens The short answer is no, plugins are the appropriate mechanism for adding new backends, the idea is to decouple the AsciiDoc core from backends and filters. There was a lengthy discussion about this: https://groups.google.com/group/asciidoc/browse_thread/thread/e92a75abcc382701/20b0e787784afdbb Which was kicked off by a previous post I had made: ``At it's core asciidoc is a tool for generating HTML and DocBook output and in my opinion it already has to many backends in the distribution (my primary motivation for the recent plugins, themes and filters support). So, for now, I would like to keep ODF support bundled as an external plugin. The complexity of the ODF backend makes it a great use case for the plugin architecture.'' Cheers, Stuart -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "asciidoc" group. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msg/asciidoc/-/X7iqADwM1Q8J. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/asciidoc?hl=en.
