path: root/README.adoc

= Asciidoctor PDF: A native PDF converter for AsciiDoc
Dan Allen <https://github.com/mojavelinux[@mojavelinux]>; Sarah White <https://github.com/graphitefriction[@graphitefriction]>
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//:pdf-page-size: [8.25in, 11.69in]
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// Aliases:
:project-name: Asciidoctor PDF
:project-handle: asciidoctor-pdf
// URIs:
//ifdef::env-github[:relfileprefix: /blob/master/]
:uri-project: https://github.com/asciidoctor/asciidoctor-pdf
:uri-project-repo: {uri-project}
:uri-project-issues: {uri-project-repo}/issues
:uri-project-list: http://discuss.asciidoctor.org
:uri-prawn: http://prawn.majesticseacreature.com
:uri-rvm: http://rvm.io
:uri-asciidoctor: http://asciidoctor.org

_Lo and behold_, a native PDF converter for AsciiDoc built with {uri-asciidoctor}[Asciidoctor] and {uri-prawn}[Prawn]! +
_No more middleman._ +
_No more DocBook toolchain._ +
It's AsciiDoc straight to PDF!

[caption=Status]
CAUTION: {project-name} is currently _alpha_ software.
While the converter handles most AsciiDoc content, there's still work needed to fill in gaps where conversion is incomplete, incorrect or not implemented.
See the milestone v1.5.0 in the {uri-project-issues}[issue tracker] for details.

== Prawn, the majestic PDF generator

{uri-project}[{project-name}] is made possible by an amazing Ruby gem named Prawn.
And what a gem it is!

{uri-prawn}[Prawn] is a nimble PDF writer for Ruby.
More important, it's a hackable platform that offers both high level APIs for the most common needs and low level APIs for bending the document model to accommodate special circumstances.

With Prawn, you can write text, draw lines and shapes and place images _anywhere_ on the page and add as much color as you like.
In addition, it brings a fluent API and aggressive code re-use to the printable document space.

Here's an example that demonstrates how to use Prawn to create a basic PDF document.

.Create a basic PDF document using Prawn
[source,ruby]
----
require 'prawn'

Prawn::Document.generate 'output.pdf' do
  text 'Hello, PDF creation!'
end
----

It's that easy.
And that's just the beginning.
Skip ahead to <<getting-started,Getting started>> to start putting it use.

Prawn is the _killer library_ for PDF generation we've needed to close this critical gap in Asciidoctor.
It absolutely takes the pain out of creating printable documents.
Picking up from there, {project-name} takes the pain out of creating PDF documents _from AsciiDoc_.

== Features

=== Notable features

* Direct AsciiDoc to PDF conversion
* <<docs/theming-guide.adoc#,Configuration-driven style and layout>>
* PDF document outline (i.e., bookmarks)
* Table of contents page(s)
* Document metadata (title, authors, subject, keywords, etc)
* Internal cross reference links
* Syntax highlighting with CodeRay or Pygments
* Page numbering
* Customizable running content (header and footer)
* “Keep together” blocks (i.e., page breaks avoided in certain block content)
* Orphan section titles avoided
* Table border settings honored
* Font-based icons
* Custom fonts

=== Missing features

See <<WORKLOG.adoc#,WORKLOG>>.

== Prerequisites

All that's needed is Ruby (1.9.3 or above; 2.2.x recommended) and a few Ruby gems, which we explain how to install in the next section.

[WARNING]
====
Prawn 2.0.0 and above requires Ruby >= 2.0.0 at installation (though it still works with Ruby 1.9.3 once you get beyond installation).
If you need to use Asciidoctor PDF with Ruby 1.9.3, you must first install Prawn 1.3.0 using:

  $ gem install prawn --version 1.3.0

You can then proceed with installation of Asciidoctor PDF.
====

To check you have Ruby available, use the `ruby` command to query the version installed:

 $ ruby --version

== Getting started

You can get {project-name} by <<install-the-published-gem,installing the published gem>> or <<development,running the code from source>>.

=== Install the published gem

{project-name} is published in pre-release on RubyGems.org.
You can install the published gem using the following command:

 $ gem install --pre asciidoctor-pdf
 
If you want to syntax highlight source listings, you'll also want to install CodeRay, Rouge or Pygments.
Choose one (or more) of the following:

.CodeRay
 $ gem install coderay

.Rouge
 $ gem install rouge

.Pygments
 $ gem install pygments.rb
 
You then activate syntax highlighting for a given document by adding the following attribute to the document header (CodeRay shown):

[source,asciidoc]
----
:source-highlighter: coderay 
----

Assuming all the required gems install properly, verify you can run the `asciidoctor-pdf` script:

 $ asciidoctor-pdf -v

If you see the version of {project-name} printed, you're ready to use {project-name}.

Let's grab an AsciiDoc document to distill and start putting {project-name} to use!

=== An example AsciiDoc document

If you don't already have an AsciiDoc document, you can use the [file]_basic-example.adoc_ file found in the examples directory of this project.

ifeval::[{safe-mode-level} >= 20]
See <<examples/basic-example.adoc#,basic-example.adoc>>.
endif::[]
ifeval::[{safe-mode-level} < 20]
.basic-example.adoc
[source,asciidoc]
....
include::examples/basic-example.adoc[]
....
endif::[]

It's time to convert the AsciiDoc document directly to PDF.

=== Convert AsciiDoc to PDF

IMPORTANT: You'll need the `coderay` gem installed to run this example since it uses the `source-highlighter` attribute with the value of `coderay`.

Converting to PDF is a simple as running the `asciidoctor-pdf` script using Ruby and passing our AsciiDoc document as the first argument.

 $ asciidoctor-pdf basic-example.adoc

This command is just a shorthand way of running:

 $ asciidoctor -r asciidoctor-pdf -b pdf basic-example.adoc

When the script completes, you should see the file [file]_basic-example.pdf_ in the same directory.
Open the [file]_basic-example.pdf_ file with a PDF viewer to see the result.

.Example PDF document rendered in a PDF viewer
image::examples/example-pdf-screenshot.png[Screenshot of PDF document,width=800,scaledwidth=100%]

You're also encouraged to try converting this <<README#,README>> as well as the documents in the examples directory to see more of what {project-name} can do.

The pain of the DocBook toolchain should be melting away about now.

== Themes

The layout and styling of the PDF is driven by a YAML configuration file.
To learn how the theming system works and how to create and apply custom themes, refer to the <<docs/theming-guide.adoc#,Asciidoctor PDF Theme Guide>>.
You can use the built-in theme files, which you can find in the [file]_data/themes_ directory, as examples.

== Font-based Icons

You can use icons in your PDF document using any of the following icon sets:

* *fa* - https://fortawesome.github.io/Font-Awesome/[Font Awesome^] (default)
* *octicon* - https://octicons.github.com/[Octicons^]
* *fi* - http://zurb.com/playground/foundation-icon-fonts-3[Foundation Icons^]
* *pf* - http://paymentfont.io/[Payment font^]

You can enable font-based icons by setting the following attribute in the header of your document:

[source,asciidoc]
----
:icons: font
----

If you want to override the font set globally, also set the `icon-set` attribute:

[source,asciidoc]
----
:icons: font
:icon-set: pf
----

Here's an example that shows how to use the Amazon icon from the payment font (pf) icon set in a sentence:

[source,asciidoc]
----
Available now at icon:amazon[].
----

You can use the `set` attribute on the icon macro to override the icon set for a given icon.

[source,asciidoc]
----
Available now at icon:amazon[set=pf].
----

In addition to the sizes supported in the HTML backend (lg, 1x, 2x, etc), you can enter any relative value in the size attribute (e.g., 1.5em, 150%, etc).

[source,asciidoc]
----
icon:android[size=40em]
----

You can enable use of fonts during PDF generation (instead of in the document header) by passing the `icons` attribute to the `asciidoctor-pdf` command.

 $ asciidoctor-pdf -a icons=font -a icon-set=octicon sample.adoc

Icon-based fonts are handled by the `prawn-icon` gem.
To find a complete list of available icons, consult the https://github.com/jessedoyle/prawn-icon/tree/master/data/fonts[prawn-icon] repository.

== Optional scripts

{project-name} also provides a shell script that invokes GhostScript (`gs`) to optimize and compress the generated PDF with minimal impact on quality.
You must have Ghostscript installed to use it.

Here's an example usage:

 $ ./bin/optimize-pdf basic-example.pdf

The command will generate the file [file]_example-optimized.pdf_ in the current directory.

WARNING: The `optimize-pdf` script currently requires a Bash shell (Linux, OSX, etc).
We plan to rewrite the script in Ruby so it works across platforms (see https://github.com/asciidoctor/asciidoctor-pdf/issues/1[issue #1])

IMPORTANT: The `optimize-pdf` script relies on Ghostscript >= 9.10.
Otherwise, it may actually make the PDF larger.
Also, you should only consider using it if the file size of the original PDF is > 5MB.

If a file is found with the extension `.pdfmarks` and the same rootname as the input file, it is used to add metadata to the generated PDF document.
This file is necessary to preserve the document metadata since Ghostscript will otherwise drop it.
That's why {project-name} always creates this file in addition to the PDF.

== Contributing

In the spirit of free software, _everyone_ is encouraged to help improve this project.

To contribute code, simply fork the project on GitHub, hack away and send a pull request with your proposed changes.

Feel free to use the {uri-project-issues}[issue tracker] or {uri-project-list}[Asciidoctor mailing list] to provide feedback or suggestions in other ways.

== Development

To help develop {project-name}, or to simply use the development version, you need to get the source from GitHub.
Follow the instructions below to learn how to clone the source and run it from your local copy.

=== Retrieve the source code

You can retrieve the source of {project-name} in one of two ways:

. Clone the git repository
. Download a zip archive of the repository

==== Option 1: Fetch using git clone

If you want to clone the git repository, simply copy the {uri-project-repo}[GitHub repository URL] and pass it to `git clone` command:

 $ git clone https://github.com/asciidoctor/asciidoctor-pdf

Next, change to the project directory:

 $ cd asciidoctor-pdf

==== Option 2: Download the archive

If you want to download a zip archive, click the btn:[Download Zip] button on the right-hand side of the repository page on GitHub.
Once the download finishes, extract the archive, open a console and change to that directory.

TIP: Instead of working out of the {project-handle} directory, you can simply add the absolute path of the [path]_bin_ directory to your `PATH` environment variable.

We'll leverage the project configuration to install the necessary dependencies.

=== Install dependencies

If you're using {uri-rvm}[RVM], we recommend creating a new gemset to work with {project-name}:

 $ rvm use 2.2@asciidoctor-pdf --create

We like RVM because it keeps the dependencies required by various projects isolated.

The dependencies needed to use {project-name} are defined in the [file]_Gemfile_ at the root of the project.
We can use Bundler to install the dependencies for us.

To check you have Bundler available, use the `bundle` command to query the version installed:

 $ bundle --version

If it's not installed, use the `gem` command to install it.

 $ gem install bundler

Then use the `bundle` command to install the project dependencies:

 $ bundle

NOTE: You need to call `bundle` from the project directory so that it can find the [file]_Gemfile_.

Assuming all the required gems install properly, verify you can run the `asciidoctor-pdf` script using Ruby:

 $ ruby ./bin/asciidoctor-pdf -v

or

 $ bundle exec ./bin/asciidoctor-pdf -v

If you see the version of {project-name} printed, you're ready to use {project-name}!

CAUTION: If you get an error message--and you're not using a Ruby manager like RVM--you may need to invoke the script through `bundle exec`:
For best results, be sure to always use `bundle exec` whenever invoking the `./bin/asciidoctor-pdf` script in development mode.

[[resources,Links]]
== Resources

* https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/prawn-ruby/MbMsCx862iY/6ImCsvLGfVcJ[Discussion about image quality in PDFs]

== Authors

{project-name} was written by https://github.com/mojavelinux[Dan Allen] and https://github.com/graphitefriction[Sarah White] of OpenDevise Inc. on behalf of the Asciidoctor Project.

== Copyright

Copyright (C) 2014-2015 OpenDevise Inc. and the Asciidoctor Project.
Free use of this software is granted under the terms of the MIT License.

For the full text of the license, see the <<LICENSE.adoc#,LICENSE>> file.
Refer to the <<NOTICE.adoc#,NOTICE>> file for information about third-party Open Source software in use.