Hi Jens, You clearly do not understand open source software. Asciidoc was developed by someone who had a need and was then made available for others to use and contribute to. Asciidoc is a translator to html and docbook. That is its purpose, not as a document generation system with rendering capability.
It is not in a "competition" with Rest or any of the other markups out there, nor does it measure success by a head count. Nor does it need to continually re-define its mission statement to capture new markets or to derive a sustainable competitive advantage. It exists because it is useful for its purpose, and that purpose continues to be needed by its developer and contributors. So you are suggesting that the project take on something clearly outside its mission, which duplicates existing specialist projects (dblatex & fop) and which significantly increases the workload on the project. Yet you do so without offering any suggestion as to how that increased work level is to be achieved by a purely volunteer project, do you have a backer, a collection of developers in reserve or some other means? It would be impolite to suggest that other people spend their own time doing something they don't need in your service without some appropriate contribution. But since asciidoc is open source you are free to use your resources on a project to create a combined release to include asciidoc, a PDF toolchain (or your own) and an ODT toolchain, windows versions or whatever. You can simply import updated versions of asciidoc as they are created, gaining the advantage of bugfixes and improvements as they occur. If you find a need to change asciidoc in a backward compatible way, contribute your patches back to the upstream asciidoc. That model is also very common in open source. Cheers Lex On 10 October 2012 18:51, Jens Getreu <[email protected]> wrote: > 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<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. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "asciidoc" group. 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.
