[TxMt] Re: asciidoc bundle

[Matt Neuburg]

Dave Baldwin wrote (a long time ago, Mon Aug 19 08:17:37 UTC 2013 to be exact):

> Has anyone had any experience with the asciidoc bundle
> https://github.com/zuckschwerdt/asciidoc.tmbundle with Textmate 2 or has a
> better one they are prepared to share?
> 
> This bundle has had little work done on it in the last 3 years so was
> written with Textmate 1 in mind.  Also since then a nicer toolchain for
> processing asciidoc files called asciidoctor has been written and is being
> actively developed.

I've been writing more or less continuously using the asciidoc TextMate bundle since May 2010, so that's 3-and-a-half years, during which I've produced and edited thousands of pages:

  http://oreilly.com/catalog/9781449397296

  http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920023562.do

  http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920029717.do
  
  http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920032465.do

  http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920031017.do

Here's one of those books in HTML form:

  http://www.apeth.com/iOSBook/

Behind the scenes, all of that is TextMate and the AsciiDoc bundle, as I explain here:

  http://www.apeth.net/matt/iosbooktoolchain.html

I also gave a talk on this workflow at OSCON 2012 in Portland, OR.

One of the nice things about TextMate is that you can modify a bundle easily. I've changed some regexes and added some snippets and keyboard shortcuts to the original AsciiDoc bundle, and I've added a couple of commands (I like to render into my browser, plus it makes a difference whether we're rendering a chapter or a book as a whole). But in general I would have to say that I have been far, far, *far* more nimble and productive with these tools than I would have been in any other way. Indeed, this experience has made me a firm believer in pure text and light markup; I never want to go back to a WYSIWYG editor, not even Frame.

I do not understand the part of your question that draws a distinction between TextMate 1 and TextMate 2. The bundle was written for TextMate 1, obviously, but TextMate 2 doesn't break it or anything. I don't see how the bundle would be made to differ significantly for TextMate 2, or what difference TextMate 2 would have to its features. Yes, this bundle is crusty and not terribly well written, but the point is to use TextMate as a nimble writing tool for producing DocBook output, and this bundle lets me do that just fine, as my experience proves beyond the slightest doubt.

Feel free to contact me directly via email if you want to talk about my modifications to the bundle, but I assure you they are very minor. I am not a sophisticated bundle writer, and I have no time to play with the bundle if I don't have to; I'm too busy using it to get real work done. m.

--
matt neuburg, phd = matt at tidbits.com, http://www.apeth.net/matt/
pantes anthropoi tou eidenai oregontai phusei
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