Asciidoctor

Asciidoctor is an open-source, Ruby-based text processor and publishing toolchain that converts documents written in the AsciiDoc markup language into multiple output formats. It solves the problem of authoring and publishing technical documentation by allowing writers to work in a plain-text format and then generate publishable outputs such as HTML5, DocBook 5, manual pages, PDF, and EPUB 3. The tool parses AsciiDoc source into a document model and provides built-in converters for the most common formats, with additional converters available as separate extensions.

The software includes a command-line interface and an ecosystem of extensions and tools, including add-on converters for PDF and EPUB 3, Asciidoctor Diagram for embedding diagrams, build plugins for Maven and Gradle, and integrations with IntelliJ and reveal.js. It supports source highlighting through highlight.js, Rouge, and Pygments, and STEM processing via MathJax. Asciidoctor runs natively on Ruby and can also be executed on the JVM through AsciidoctorJ or in JavaScript environments via Asciidoctor.js. It works on Linux, macOS, and Windows.

Asciidoctor is designed for technical writers, developers, and documentation teams who need a lightweight, text-based authoring workflow. It is packaged as a Ruby gem distributed via RubyGems.org, and is also available as a Docker image and through package managers for various Linux distributions, macOS (Homebrew and MacPorts), and Windows (Chocolatey and RubyInstaller). The software is free and open-source, with no mention of paid editions or seat-based licensing.