Re: [RFC suggestion] Generate manpage directly with Asciidoctor

From: Martin Ågren <martin.agren@gmail.com>
Date: May 11, 2021, 18:54 UTC
Message-ID: <CAN0heSpNhfmsVO5rME1xZzPPbkCuDm0ng64xWNx4xy+8ZrVz+Q@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <0fd3182c-3805-ee1b-5a35-e0c9a67892ab@gmail.com>

On Tue, 11 May 2021 at 11:04, Jean-Noël Avila <avila.jn@gmail.com> wrote:

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>
> On 09/05/2021 at 10:20, Martin Ågren wrote :
> >
> > I tend to think asciidoctor even renders our manpages *better* than
> > asciidoc does. Not by a huge margin, but a few things here and there.
> > Some time around the Python 2 EOL, I was about to propose flipping the
> > default, but then I went to look up the asciidoc EOL schedule, and like
> > you, I noticed that it was a lot more alive and kicking than I thought
> > it was. So it's not so much "we should flip to avoid a bitrotting
> > dependency" as it is "asciidoctor is arguably nicer" or "it's the way
> > forward".
>
> If we start to change the documentation format to "the way  forward", we
> may soon end up with a format which is no longer handled by the legacy
> asciidoc.py

We used to be in a situation where Asciidoctor looked worse and the rendered versions were quite different. We've fixed up quite a few discrepancies by making some change that "happens" to be a noop with one engine but an improvement with the other. (That it just "happens" has sometimes been my feeling anyway.) Sometimes, we've been able to improve both by spotting a difference, so that's good.

I would also expect that with more eyes on asciidoctor-built docs (because default) and fewer on the other, the non-default will start to degrade.

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> As stated on https://github.com/asciidoc-py/asciidoc-py :
>
> "AsciiDoc.py is a legacy processor for this syntax, handling an older
> rendition of AsciiDoc. As such, this will not properly handle the
> current AsciiDoc specification. It is suggested that unless you
> specifically require the AsciiDoc.py toolchain, you should find a
> processor that handles the modern AsciiDoc syntax."

Thanks for that quote. It's very enlightening.

> FWIW, we are already using Asciidoctor for publishing the manpages to
> https://git-scm.com

Thank you for all your work on that site!

Martin