The glossary entry is a list of terms and their definitions, so multi-paragraph definitions need "+" continuation lines to indicate that they are part of a single entry.

When an entry contains a sub-list (say, a bulleted list), the final "+" may become ambiguous: is it connecting the next paragraph to the final entry of the sub-list, or to the original list of definition paragraphs?

Asciidoc generally connects it to the former, even when we mean the latter, and you end up with the next paragraph indented incorrectly, like this:

  glob
    ...defines glob...

    Two consecutive asterisks ("**") in patterns matched
    against full pathname may have special meaning:

    - ...some special meaning of **...

    - ...another special meaning of **...

    - Other consecutive asterisks are considered invalid.

      Glob magic is incompatible with literal magic.

That final "Glob magic is incompatible" paragraph is in the wrong spot. It should be at the same level as "Two consecutive asterisks", as it is not part of the final "Other consecutive asterisks" bullet point.

The same problem appears in several other spots in the glossary.

We can fix this by using "--" markers, which put the sub-list into its own block. This should catch all of the unordered lists in the glossary, which I found by grepping for " -" list markers.

Signed-off-by: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
---
Just happened to notice this while looking at the "ref" entry.

 Documentation/glossary-content.adoc | 12 ++++++++++--
 1 file changed, 10 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-)

On Sat, Apr 11, 2026, at 21:06, Jeff King wrote:

`Documentation/doc-diff` confirms that this is the effect of this change.

And that it is the effect for all the other spots at as well: pull a paragraph out of a bullet list back to the previous block (or level).

Yes, for what it’s worth I think open blocks (`--`) are a great cure for this when you are lucky enough to not already be in an open block.

AsciiDoc is certainly a format.

On Sat, Apr 11, 2026, at 22:34, Kristoffer Haugsbakk wrote:

But with `make html` there are some `+` artifacts:

    + Glob magic is incompatible with literal magic.
    [...]
    + Note that when matching against a tree object, attributes are [...]

This is very off the cuff since I have to go now. So I might be missing something/made a mistake.

I think the first thing is caused by the context already being in an open block?

On Sat, Apr 11, 2026 at 10:47:34PM +0200, Kristoffer Haugsbakk wrote:

Hmm, I don't see that in the HTML when I build with asciidoc. But if I build with asciidoctor, I see it both in the HTML and in the doc-diff output. Yuck.

Yes. Looks like asciidoc learned to handle nested entries better, but perhaps asciidoctor didn't.

I think I've found a workaround, which I'll post in a moment. Thanks for reporting.

-Peff

On Sat, Apr 11, 2026 at 05:42:13PM -0400, Jeff King wrote:

Here it is.

-- >8 --
Subject: [PATCH] gitglossary: fix indentation of sub-lists

The glossary entry is a list of terms and their definitions, so multi-paragraph definitions need "+" continuation lines to indicate that they are part of a single entry.

When an entry contains a sub-list (say, a bulleted list), the final "+" may become ambiguous: is it connecting the next paragraph to the final entry of the sub-list, or to the original list of definition paragraphs?

Asciidoc generally connects it to the former, even when we mean the latter, and you end up with the next paragraph indented incorrectly, like this:

  glob
    ...defines glob...

    Two consecutive asterisks ("**") in patterns matched
    against full pathname may have special meaning:

    - ...some special meaning of **...

    - ...another special meaning of **...

    - Other consecutive asterisks are considered invalid.

      Glob magic is incompatible with literal magic.

That final "Glob magic is incompatible" paragraph is in the wrong spot. It should be at the same level as "Two consecutive asterisks", as it is not part of the final "Other consecutive asterisks" bullet point.

The same problem appears in several other spots in the glossary.

Usually we'd fix this by using "--" markers, which put the sub-list into its own block. But there's a catch: in some of these spots we are already in an open block, and nesting open blocks is a problem. It seems to work for me using Asciidoc 10.2.1, but Asciidoctor 2.0.26 makes a mess of it (our intent to open a new block seems to close the old one).

Fortunately there's a work-around: when using a "+" list-continuation, the number of empty lines above the continuation indicates which level of parent list to continue. So by adding an empty line after our unordered list (before the "+"), we should be able to continue the definition list item.

But asciidoc being asciidoc, of course that is not the end of the story. That technique works fine for the "glob" and "attr" lists in this patch, but under the "refs" item it works for only 1 of the 2 lists! I can't figure out why, and this may be an asciidoctor bug. But we can work around it by using "--" open-block markers here, since we're not already in an open block.

So using the extra blank line for the first two instances, and "--" markers for the second two, this patch produces identical output from "doc-diff HEAD^ HEAD" for both --asciidoctor and --ascii modes.

Signed-off-by: Jeff King <peff@peff.net>
---
 Documentation/glossary-content.adoc | 6 ++++++
 1 file changed, 6 insertions(+)

On Sat, Apr 11, 2026, at 23:55, Jeff King wrote:

Nice.

Ouch.

You mention “asciidoc being asciidoc” but here it seems to be about Asciidoctor?

Nit: s/--ascii/--asciidoc/

On Sun, Apr 12, 2026 at 11:10:34AM +0200, Kristoffer Haugsbakk wrote:

It is. I meant "asciidoc the language", not "asciidoc the tool". I didn't want to be too harsh on asciidoctor specifically. I think in aggregate the pain comes equally from both tools. ;)

Oops, yes.

-Peff