I want to start by making it very clear that the Asciidoctor project is the home of the AsciiDoc syntax. Asciidoctor runs on every major services that supports AsciiDoc and most integrations have switched over to Asciidoctor at this point. AsciiDoc Python is where AsciiDoc originated, but Asciidoctor is where it lives on.
I do want to see the definition of AsciiDoc separated eventually from the processor, but we haven't crossed that bridge yet. I envision a versioned specification at some point in the future (I just haven't been able to make that commitment yet).
> I wonder if I could write diary and take notes in AsciiDoctor and keep it unchanged for decades or even centuries. Would my AsciiDoctor documents compile without problems after 3 decades? Would they after 100 years?
On the one hand, there's no way I could guarantee that. Will we even have computers then?
On the other hand, that's the whole idea of AsciiDoc. It's plain text. You can always parse it. You can even print it and transcribe it with pen and paper.
> I want document archival.
If your goal is document archival, I'd recommend DocBook instead. The goal of AsciiDoc is to make writing, especially highly technical and structured writing, easy and enjoyable. It's not designed to be an archive format. That's really where DocBook comes in and why one of the core converters in Asciidoctor produces DocBook. These two languages are companions in many ways (though certainly not exclusively so).
> If AsciiDoctor is likely to introduce breaking changes, is there a stable subset of AsciiDoctor that's not likely to change?
It's pretty safe to say the core syntax patterns in AsciiDoc are not likely going to change (delimited blocks, macros, preprocessor directives, lists, etc). When we do make a substantial change to the syntax, we'll probably use a new name for that syntax (something like UniDoc). That would signal to writers to expect a certain amount of differences. (Though that's by no means a final decision). But we'll definitely continue to make tweaks to AsciiDoc to improve it within the boundaries of that core syntax.
Keep in mind, you can always just fix the version of Asciidoctor you are using. Older versions will always remain available, so that's one approach you can take to guarantee stability for eons.
I want to finish be reiterating what I see as the goal of Asciidoctor. The goal of Asciidoctor is to give writers a powerful tool to create highly technical documents using concise, comprehensible markup, and to be able to transform that content in a myriad of ways so as to get the most use out of it. Yes, compatibility is a goal, but we have to balance that with evolving the syntax. And I can't predict the future.
-Dan
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