Deth

Something made me look at AsciiDoc, and the syntax looks good, and it does more things. Whether I go through with it or not will be something that time will tell. As it’s not something I’m in a big hurry to do, I just want to play with a new toy..

These are the pros that, I think, would come from it.

• AsciiDoc seems to have more features and is more powerful in what it can do. I think I can eliminate some of my short codes by using that.
• Some syntax, like links and images, is easier on my eyes to recognize and easier for my brain to grasp.
• Hugo and AsciiDoc are used for the FreeBSD documents, so they are much more likely to be maintained in an unbroken state in the ports tree. It’s a small pro because I don’t remember the last time a port was broken as long as the project itself is still active.

Here are some of the cons I can see from switching back

• Using Go templates again. As powerful as they are, my brain chokes on the syntax, which can be harder to follow.
• More moving parts. Unlike Zola, Hugo requires external programs for SCSS, and worse, they are moving towards dart-sass, which isn’t in the FreeBSD ports, so I have to download a Linux version manually. LibSass is depreciated, so who knows how long that will work? I don’t need to use SCSS, but it does make life a bit easier.
• AsciiDoc requires an external program that is built using Ruby, so that’s yet another dependency that I would have installed for no other reason. It’s just something else that can break.
• Regular markdown is the most portable. If I decide to switch SSGs in the future, all the generators that I’ve seen support markdown. Not many can use AsciiDoc. That’s a bit nullified by having to change short codes and front matter anyway.

I did a quick conversion using kramdoc on my old Hugo stuff, and it worked after a little trial and error, and the site generated fine. It was significantly slower, but I expected that. I will take my time playing with it and see if it’s worth completely switching back to Hugo or not, but at the very least I will learn some new things and new tools. There were lots of things not right with it like the fact that it ate the front matter. It also screwed up the tables.

If I do go through with it, I know it will be a longer project to get it right. I would redo my Hugo partials and short codes from scratch since I’ve changed a good bit of that stuff over time since I switched to Zola.