Re: Can I build this https://github.com/elastic/elasticsearch-definitive-guide into pdf?
Posted by mojavelinux on Oct 15, 2015; 6:59am URL: https://discuss.asciidoctor.org/Can-I-build-this-https-github-com-elastic-elasticsearch-definitive-guide-into-pdf-tp3845p3854.html
On Wed, Oct 14, 2015 at 6:20 AM, dzmitry.lahoda [via Asciidoctor :: Discussion] <[hidden email]> wrote:
But I saw dozens of errors in attached `book.txt`. Are these errors mean loss of text?
There's no loss of text. Asciidoctor PDF does not drop text. Instead, it inserts the text without formatting it.
These errors all stem from the fact that Asciidoctor PDF does not (yet) support arbitrary character entities (e.g., —). These are being used in many places in this manuscript to provide dashes and other special characters. Attribute references should be used instead so that they can be properly substituted globally. For instance, in this case:
will find all ages older than 30—`gt` stands for _greater than_.
should be:
will find all ages older than 30{emdash}`gt` stands for _greater than_.
This not only allows us to deal with differences in backend, it also makes it much, much clearer to the author what that character is.
Asciidoctor PDF can handle the actual Unicode glyph, which could be injected if an attribute were used at these places.
I found that book has Atlas artifacts in it.
I would prefer if O'Reilly stayed within the spirit of AsciiDoc. There are many ways to extend the AsciiDoc syntax and it is encouraged. If we use this official system of extension (inline macros, block macros, custom blocks, etc), then we can ensure portability between the tools. Otherwise, we drift into the territory where Markdown is, where everyone has different syntax and tools can't easily be created. Extensions are designed to keep us on the same page.