We received great feedback on the first alpha for Asciidoctor PDF 2, and immediately got to work fixing bugs and wrapping up issues that didn't make it into the first alpha. This release very nearly represents what we want Asciidoctor PDF 2 to be.

There are several notable enhancements in this release worth drawing attention to. First, you can now add the notitle option to the title of any section so it only appears in the TOC, not the document. This can be useful for creating entries in the TOC that are not sections, as the entry will effectively link to the first child element. Speaking of sections, you now add the breakable option to a section to keep the title with the first block of content, just like you can do for tables. It doesn't change where the section breaks, but it does provide a hint to the converter to do extra work to keep the section title from being orphaned. On the table front, you can now style the ends and sides of the frame and the rows and cols of the grid independently. To help improve the terminology in the theme, we have separated the align and text-align keys so the meaning of these keys doesn't get entangled. You can also now set a background color on any caption and define image-based admonition icons in the theme. If you are writing an extended converter, note that all methods with the prefix layout_ have been renamed to have the prefix inscribe_. However, if a converter uses the old method names, it will still work. Finally, this release includes numerous bug fixes and a few improvements to the log messages. As usual, consult the CHANGELOG for a more detailed view of what changed.

During this development cycle, the new docs for Asciidoctor PDF continued to be improved and reorganized thanks to the work by Sarah. The new docs will go live on https://docs.asciidoctor.org at the same time Asciidoctor PDF 2.0.0 is released.

To reiterate, we don't anticipate having many alpha releases or a long prerelease cycle. We're going to give users a chance to try this release so we can uncover any unexpected regressions, errors, or problem areas. If they come up, we will try to address them quickly so that we can turn around a final release very soon.

Distribution

• RubyGem (asciidoctor-pdf)

Changelog

Enhancements

• separate align and text-align keys in theme schema; remap old keys for backwards compatibility (#2095)
• allow theme to control the border on all sides of tables independently (#902)
• keep section title with first block of content is breakable option is set on section (#2075, #38)
• pass part, chapterlike, and hidden options to arrange_section method
• add support for background-color property on caption (#1995)
• add support for image-based icons, resolved from iconsdir and having the icontype file extension (#1770)
• add asciidoctor/pdf/nogmagick script to prevent Gmagick from handling PNG images (#1687)
• change name of untitled option on special section to notitle
• allow the title of any section to be hidden using the notitle option
• allow imported PDF page to be referenced in TOC by enclosing in parent section with notitle option (#1213)
• allow entry for preface to be added to TOC without adding title to body using the notitle option on the preface section (#1786)
• automatically promote the notitle option from the first block in the premable to preface section; restore lead role on opening paragraph (#1786)

Improvements

• change "icon" to "icon image" in warning about missing admonition icon image
• report admonition type in warning about missing implicit admonition icon image

Bug Fixes

• set the base font of the front cover image is a PDF and the title page is not active (#2092)
• pass through warnings in background SVG to logger (#1940)
• keep closing quote with trailing ellipsis in text enclosed in typographic quotes (#321)
• collapse space in front of hidden index term (#2061)
• delete dests on page before deleting it (keeps generated PDF clean of obsolete destinations)
• don't call arrange_section if section title is hidden
• remove theme_font enclosure around call to start_new_chapter and start_new_part
• change layout_ method prefix to inscribe_ in converter (#2099)

Release meta

Released on: 2022-04-28
Released by: @mojavelinux
Release beer: Hop Zombie Red IPA by Lone Tree Brewing

Logs: resolved issues | full diff

Credits

A very special thanks to all the awesome supporters of the Asciidoctor OpenCollective campaign who provided critical funding for the development of this release as well as ongoing development of the project.