As several projects (JDF, CDI, Arquillian, etc) move more towards using
lightweight markup languages for documentation, I see a real opportunity in
JBossTools to provide an AsciiDoc (and perhaps Markdown) editor and preview
pane, very similar to how the HTML editor works. (In fact, personally, I
see more value in this tool than the HTML editor).
The features I'd like to see are:
* syntax highlighting
* syntax assistance and/or templates
* preview pane (split or as separate tab)
It may also be interesting to have a view which can help layout text-based
diagrams. See AsciiFlow (
http://asciiflow.com) to get the idea. Text-based
diagramming can save developers a lot of time.
Although AsciiDoc is written in Python, it can be invoked in Java through
Jython [1]. There is also effort underway to create a Ruby port, which
would enable it to be called via JRuby [2].
-Dan
[1]
https://github.com/asciidoc/asciidoc-maven-plugin/blob/master/src/main/ja...
[2]
https://github.com/erebor/asciidoctor
--
Dan Allen
Principal Software Engineer, Red Hat | Author of Seam in Action
Registered Linux User #231597
http://google.com/profiles/dan.j.allen
http://mojavelinux.com
http://mojavelinux.com/seaminaction