users@javaee-security-spec.java.net

[javaee-security-spec users] [jsr375-experts] AsciiDoctor Problems

From: Will Hopkins <will.hopkins_at_oracle.com>
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2017 13:28:03 -0400

Hi All,

As I was updating the spec for the EDR, I found myself wrestling a lot
with AsciiDoctor. It seems to do pretty well for HTML output, but it's
got a lot of problems with PDF. For example:

  * I couldn't find any way to get anything other than the title (e.g.,
    author, date, version, etc.) onto the title page. The asciidoc
    documentation says you should be able to put at least one line after
    the title, for author/version, and that worked for HTML output, but
    not PDF (and one line is not much).

  * I couldn't find a good way to do front-matter, in particular for the
    license page. It can't come before the ToC, and the ToC has problems
    with it.

  * Couldn't get "hard breaks" to work for the license text, no matter
    which syntax I used (trailing "+", [hardbreaks], etc.). Had to
    resort to putting blank lines between lines that should have been
    together, but with hard breaks.

  * The "Table of Contents" title didn't print for the ToC.

  * Page numbering wasn't right (might be able to fix this). Seemed to
    print a page number for the Title page.

  * Would like to omit the blank pages it prints when the previous
    section ends on an even page, since this will (probably) never be
    printed as a physical book where left/right matters for page numbers.

Take a look at the published EDR to see what I mean. Overall, I think
the PDF output is not good enough for final publication. Hopefully there
are ways to fix this -- maybe a different backend, or manually using
asciidoc instead of maven/asciidoctor, or maybe I'm just using the
markup correctly -- but we have to find some way to get better output.

Suggestions welcome. ;)

Will

-- 
Will Hopkins | WebLogic Security Architect | +1.781.442.0310
Oracle Application Development
35 Network Drive, Burlington, MA 01803