Posted by habamax on
URL: https://discuss.asciidoctor.org/Why-does-the-default-output-of-asciidoctor-pdf-look-so-ugly-tp7536p7545.html

Ralf Jahns wrote

But, after all, I still think that these things should be changed:

Headings should be closer to following text than to preceding text. That's the way it is in every book I could find.

While I agree with this -- you have to understand that asciidoctor is not only about books. I do a lot of technical and business documentation (specifications) for example. And I had not a single issue with heading padding/margin.

Ralf Jahns wrote

Table lines should be black. Why would anyone make them grey??? Quickly checked 1.2 meters of sofware development books and additionally a few more other non fictional books. None with grey table lines! All tables have black lines. (Some have no vertical lines.) In my humble opinion, the heading line could get emphasized a little more (perhaps by a grey background).

Why do you think your preferences should be default?

Ralf Jahns wrote

More than one font should be used. Perhaps it could be done like in LaTeX, which uses two (different font for the headings).

Why 2 fonts? I don't think Serif body text and Sans-serif headings (or vise versa) is still relevant. And if it is what you think should be in your book/document it is really easy to do so.

I had it in my themes (serif headings, sans-serif body text) for  a long time.  You can have it too (good luck searching perfect font combination :) )

Ralf Jahns wrote

Every user can do this by himself. But why? This is NO work compared to what is necessary to develop such a nice tool as asciidoctor. But it will give everyone a much nicer first impression about the output!

Because people are different. They like different things. What you think is beautiful others might find not so appealing. That is why asciidoctor has theming system so everyone can tailor asciidoctor-pdf output for what they think is beautiful.

Again, if you still want to propose changes to default theme -- go for github issues. I don't think Dan would do anything out of forum discussions unless it is critical.

BTW, I guess you have created a theme and example document to demonstrate how it should look like?