Metanorma: Aequitate Verum

Learning Metanorma

Editing a Metanorma document - Introduction to AsciiDoc

Before we write our first Metanorma document, let us look at the foundation for all Metanorma documents: AsciiDoc.

In this lesson, you will learn:

  • What AsciiDoc is

  • Which elements a typical Metanorma document contains

  • How to write and format text with AsciiDoc

Introduction to Metanorma AsciiDoc

Each Metanorma document is written in AsciiDoc, a markup language that annotates text with processing instructions for layout. Since AsciiDoc only consists of text, you can use any editor to create AsciiDoc files (.adoc files). AsciiDoc is very similar to Markdown or Wiki formatting but provides more precise markup for creating text documents, for example to create a bibliography section or an index.

Because Metanorma fulfills the markup requirements of SDOs, Metanorma extends plain AsciiDoc. This version of AsciiDoc is called Metanorma AsciiDoc.

An AsciiDoc document consists of different levels of granularity:

  • The document head (also called the header)

  • Sections

  • Blocks

  • Inline markup

We will have a look at these different levels of markup in the following lessons and you can do exercises on your local machine.

Prerequisites

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