asciidoc

name

asciidoc

description

How AsciiDoc is authored and extended in pdocs — the content tree Antora expects, resource IDs and xrefs, the attributes the playbooks set, and the Asciidoctor.js extension API as Antora actually loads it. USE WHEN writing or editing an .adoc page, adding a page to the nav, fixing a broken xref or include, writing a custom block/macro/preprocessor, or wiring an extension into a playbook. EXAMPLES: 'add a page', 'my xref doesn't resolve', 'the build fails on a warning', 'add a custom admonition', 'register a block macro', 'my extension is being skipped', 'why is {attr} not substituted'.

AsciiDoc in pdocs

Every page of every site here is AsciiDoc, parsed by Asciidoctor and orchestrated by Antora. Both facts matter: Antora restricts and reinterprets parts of the language (includes, xrefs, image paths) and the upstream Asciidoctor documentation describes the unrestricted form. Where the two differ, this skill states the Antora rule — that is the one this repository obeys.

• reference/syntax.md — the language: blocks, attributes, macros, lists, tables, includes, conditionals, substitutions, plus a URL index into the upstream language docs.
• reference/extensions.md — the Asciidoctor.js extension points, the registration contract Antora enforces, and how to wire an extension into a playbook.

For what the rendered HTML looks like read ui-bundle-anatomy (templates) and iop-ds-components (markup and classes the styling expects).

Where content lives

A documentation site is an Antora component: a directory containing antora.yml and a modules/ tree. Both sites follow the same shape.

code/packages/<site>/
  antora-playbook.yml           build entry point — site title, content sources, UI, attributes
  docs/
    antora.yml                  component descriptor: name, title, version, nav
    modules/
      ROOT/                     the default module; its name is omitted from resource IDs
        nav.adoc                the navigation tree for this module
        pages/*.adoc            one page per file — these become site URLs

Only pages/ exists today. The other family directories are created when first needed, with these exact names — Antora keys off them and ignores anything else:

directory	family	referenced as
pages/	page$	xref:name.adoc[]
partials/	partial$	include::partial$name.adoc[]
examples/	example$	include::example$name.json[]
images/	image$	image::name.png[]
attachments/	attachment$	xref:attachment$file.pdf[]

Both components declare version: ~ — they are versionless, so no resource ID ever carries a version segment.

Resource IDs

Antora addresses content by resource ID, not by relative path:

version@component:module:family$relative/path.adoc#fragment

Everything left of the filename is optional and defaults to the current page's context. In practice, inside ROOT of a versionless component:

reference	means
xref:index.adoc[Home]	a page in the same module
xref:guide/setup.adoc[]	a page in a subdirectory of pages/ — empty text uses the target's title
xref:example:index.adoc[]	a page in the example component
xref:index.adoc#install[]	a fragment on another page
include::partial$intro.adoc[]	a partial from the same module

../ path traversal between pages is not how this works. A page one directory deep still addresses its sibling as xref:guide/other.adoc[] — the ID is module-relative, never file-relative.

Attributes in force

Antora sets these before the playbook is read (@antora/asciidoc-loader):

env=site  env-site  site-gen=antora  site-gen-antora
attribute-missing=warn  icons=font  sectanchors  source-highlighter=highlight.js

Both playbooks then add, under asciidoc.attributes:

attribute	effect
experimental	enables kbd:[], btn:[] and menu:[]
idprefix: ''	section IDs lose the leading _
idseparator: '-'	word separator in generated IDs is -, not _
icons: font, sectanchors	redundant — Antora already defaults both. Harmless, but do not treat their presence as the reason they work

So a section == Getting Started gets the ID getting-started, and a hand-written xref:page.adoc#getting-started[] matches. Under stock Asciidoctor the same heading would be _getting_started — upstream examples show that form.

attribute-missing=warn plus the failure level below means a reference to an undefined attribute fails the build.

Where a change goes

you want to	do
add a page	create docs/modules/ROOT/pages/name.adoc and add an xref: to nav.adoc
add a section to the nav	edit nav.adoc — nesting is list depth (*, **, ***)
reuse a chunk of prose	docs/modules/ROOT/partials/name.adoc, included as partial$name.adoc
add an image	docs/modules/ROOT/images/name.png, referenced as image::name.png[Alt]
set a site-wide attribute	asciidoc.attributes in antora-playbook.yml
set a component-wide attribute	asciidoc.attributes in docs/antora.yml
set a page-scoped attribute	an attribute entry in the page header, above the first blank line
add custom syntax	an Asciidoctor extension — see reference/extensions.md

Page attributes the UI reads

The UI bundle's default layout reads specific page-* attributes (and description) straight off the page header — see hero.hbs's own comment for the authoritative version:

attribute	effect
description	hero excerpt (below the title) AND <meta name="description">
page-tags	comma-separated; one label pill each in the hero
page-action / page-action-url	primary hero button — renders only when BOTH are set
page-action-secondary / page-action-secondary-url	secondary hero button, same rule
page-role: -hero	suppresses the hero entirely; the title falls back to an in-article <h1>
page-role: -toc	suppresses the right-hand table of contents
page-pagination	enables the previous/next footer links

page-role accepts several space-separated tokens (-hero -toc) — it becomes a literal class on <body>, so CSS/JS keying off one of them (body.-toc) is unaffected by the others being present. A *-url attribute accepts either an Antora page reference (getting-started.adoc) or a literal URL; resolvePageURL returns undefined rather than throwing when it isn't a page reference, so the literal is used as a fallback with no extra syntax on the author's side.

Constraints that fail silently

Each of these produces a wrong result or a hard build failure without an obvious cause.

• A warning is a build failure. Both playbooks set runtime.log.failure_level: warn. A broken xref, a missing include target, an undefined attribute reference or a bad image path exits non-zero. There is no "it built with warnings" state here.
• A page missing from nav.adoc still builds. It publishes at its URL, renders with an empty navigation context and is reachable only by direct link. Nothing warns.
• include:: cannot read arbitrary paths. Antora installs its own include processor that resolves targets against the content catalog, so only the family forms (partial$, example$, and page IDs) work. A filesystem path fails, and it fails at build time, not at review time.
• Attribute references are not substituted inside verbatim blocks. {version} inside ---- or .... renders literally unless the block carries subs=attributes+.
• Unconstrained formatting needs doubled marks. **bold** mid-word, __italic__ mid-word, ##highlight##. The single-mark form adjacent to a word character is not formatting at all and renders as literal punctuation.
• A list is broken by a bare blank line plus non-list content. Attaching a paragraph, block or nested content to a list item requires a + continuation line.
• example and starter are separate components sharing one UI. A cross-component xref must name the component (xref:starter:index.adoc[]) and only resolves when both are in the same playbook — today they are not, so cross-component xrefs fail.
• The UI preview renders AsciiDoc through a different Asciidoctor than the sites do. code/packages/ui-bundle/preview-src/*.adoc is converted by @asciidoctor/core 4.0.8 with its own attribute set, which omits idprefix/idseparator. Section IDs there are _getting_started. Do not use the preview to verify anything about IDs, xrefs or includes — it has no content catalog at all.
• Two Asciidoctor majors are installed. Antora 3.1.15 pins @asciidoctor/core ~2.2; the UI bundle uses ~4.0.8. docs.asciidoctor.org/asciidoctor.js/latest documents 4.0, whose API differs from the 2.2 the sites actually run. See before copying any upstream JavaScript.

Commands

just sets its working directory to code/, so run it from the repository root. Raw pnpm/nx must be run from code/.

command	does
just build-site example	build one site (example or starter)
just build	build every package
just dev example	build, then serve on :5000 and rebuild on edit
just preview-ui	UI bundle preview on :5252 — templates only, not real content
pnpm nx run @inditextech/pdocs-example:build	the underlying target (antora --fetch antora-playbook.yml)

Build output is code/packages/<site>/build/site.