Resetting nested attribute reference values

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Resetting nested attribute reference values

trost
Hello--

I am having trouble finding information about something you might call "nested references" in Asciidoc--i.e., a user attribute reference that points to a value that contains another user attribute reference.  In particular, I want to be able to reset the value of the lower-level reference and then have that new value be rendered by the upper-level reference without having to also reset the value of the upper-level reference, if that makes sense.

To illustrate the problem, consider the following example:

:fruit:      orange
:phrase: {fruit} is a kind of fruit.
{phrase}

In this simplistic example, Asciidoctor would render "orange is a kind of fruit".

But, if I wanted to reset the value of "fruit"...

:fruit:      orange
:phrase: {fruit} is a kind of fruit.
:fruit:      apple
{phrase}

...Asciidoctor will still render "orange is a kind of fruit".  I want Asciidoctor to reset the value of "fruit" within the "phrase" value, without having to explicitly reset the "phrase" attribute after the "apple" line.  Is that kind of functionality supported?
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Re: Resetting nested attribute reference values

mojavelinux
Administrator
@trost,

By default, attribute values are not recomputed. Therefore, reassigning fruit has no affect on phrase because phrase has already been resolved.

I looked into deferring the resolution of the attribute references when defining the attribute. To do that, you would use:

:phrase: pass:c[{fruit} is a kind of fruit]

While that prevents the attribute reference from being resolved at assignment, there's no way in AsciiDoc to have it be resolved later (aside from writing an extension*). The problem is, when you reference {phrase}, it only resolves the value of phrase, not the attribute references it contains.

Unless there's something I'm not thinking of, I don't think there's a way to do what you want to do currently. AsciiDoc attributes weren't designed for that use case. We could consider a way to recursively resolve attribute references after Asciidoctor 2.0.0.

Cheers,

-Dan

You could write an inline macro extension called "resolve-deep" (e.g., resolve-deep:phrase[]) that resolves attribute references inside of an attribute value.

On Thu, Jan 24, 2019 at 4:51 PM trost [via Asciidoctor :: Discussion] <[hidden email]> wrote:
Hello--

I am having trouble finding information about something you might call "nested references" in Asciidoc--i.e., a user attribute reference that points to a value that contains another user attribute reference.  In particular, I want to be able to reset the value of the lower-level reference and then have that new value be rendered by the upper-level reference without having to also reset the value of the upper-level reference, if that makes sense.

To illustrate the problem, consider the following example:

:fruit:      orange
:phrase: {fruit} is a kind of fruit.
{phrase}

In this simplistic example, Asciidoctor would render "orange is a kind of fruit".

But, if I wanted to reset the value of "fruit"...

:fruit:      orange
:phrase: {fruit} is a kind of fruit.
:fruit:      apple
{phrase}

...Asciidoctor will still render "orange is a kind of fruit".  I want Asciidoctor to reset the value of "fruit" within the "phrase" value, without having to explicitly reset the "phrase" attribute after the "apple" line.  Is that kind of functionality supported?


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--
Dan Allen | @mojavelinux | https://twitter.com/mojavelinux
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Re: Resetting nested attribute reference values

trost
Dan,

Thanks for the reply!

For now, I'll look for a workaround solution for my use-case.

It doesn't seem like coding support for something like this would be that difficult, provided you're familiar with Ruby, which I'm not :\  Is this where you envision such a change going?

-Tyson