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23 lines
1.8 KiB
23 lines
1.8 KiB
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Included in:
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- user-manual: Extensions
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Extensions have proven to be central to the success of AsciiDoc because they open up the language to new use cases.
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However, the way extensions are implemented in AsciiDoc Python presents a number of problems:
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* They are challenging to write because they work at such a low-level (read as: nasty regular expressions).
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* They are fragile since they often rely on system commands to do anything significant.
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* They are hard to distribute due to the lack of integration with a formal distribution system.
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Asciidoctor addresses these issues by introducing a proper extension API that offers a superset of the extension points that AsciiDoc Python provides.
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As a result, extensions in Asciidoctor are easier to write, more powerful, and simpler to distribute.
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The goal for Asciidoctor has always been to allow extensions to be written using the full power of a programming language (whether it be Ruby, Java, Groovy or JavaScript), similar to what we've done with the backend (conversion) mechanism.
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That way, you don't have to shave yaks to get the functionality you want, and you can distribute the extension using defacto-standard packaging mechanisms like RubyGems or JARs.
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WARNING: The extension API in Asciidoctor is stable with the exception of inline macros.
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Since inline content is not parsed until the convert phase, the inline macro processor must return converted text (e.g., HTML) rather than an AST node.
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Once Asciidoctor is changed to https://github.com/asciidoctor/asciidoctor/issues/61[process inline content during the parse phase], the inline macro processor will need to return an inline node.
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When that switch occurs, there will either be some sort of adapter or required migration for inline macro processors, but that has yet to be determined.
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