When we define a table in Asciidoctor we might want to span a cell over multiple columns or rows, instead of just a single column or row. We can do this using a cell specifier with the following format: column-span.row-span+. The values for column-span and row-span define the number of columns and rows the cell must span. We put the cell specifier before the pipe symbol (|) in our table definition.
In the following example Asciidoctor markup we have three tables. In the first table we span a cell over 2 columns, the second table spans a cell over 2 rows and in the final table we span a cell over both 2 columns and rows.
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With Asciidoctor we can repeat cell contents if we prefix the cell separator pipe symbol (|) with the number of times we want to repeat the cell followed by an asterisk (*).
In the following example Asciidoctor source file we define two tables and add 2* to cells that we want to repeat two times:
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When we transform our Asciidoc source files to HTML Asciidoctor will print the date and time the document was last updated in the footer. If we want to disable the Last updated text we disable the document attribute last-update-label.
In the following example Asciidoc file we disable the Last update label in the footer:
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Since the latest Grails versions a Grails wrapper is automatically created when we execute the create-app command. If we don't want the wrapper to be created we can use the command argument --skip-wrapper. If later we changed our mind and want the Grails wrapper we can simply run the wrapper command from our Grails application directory.
Let's run the create-app command with the --skip-wrapper argument. If we check the contents of the created directory we see that the wrapper files are not created:
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Normally all Asciidoc files are processed and transformed to output files by Asciidoctor. But if we start the file name with an underscore (_) the file is not transformed to an output file. This is very useful, because we can define some Asciidoc document fragments and include them in other Asciidoc files, but in the output directory the document fragment is not generated.
Let's create two Asciidoc files. One is _attrs.adoc which is a document fragment file that is used in sample.doc:
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To get the current Gradle version we can use the gradleVersion property of the Gradle object. This returns a string value we can use for displaying the values. If we want to compare Gradle versions we can use the GradleVersion object. With this class we can get the current version, but we can also compare Gradle versions. This can be useful in our build scripts if we have functionality based on a Gradle version.
In the following build file we first have a task that uses the gradleVersion of Gradle. Then inside the task we use the static method current of the GradleVersion class. We get an GradleVersion instance and we display different properties from this instance. In the task compareGradleVersion we create a GradleVersion instance with the static version method. We compare multiple GradleVersion objects and have different functionality based on the Gradle version.
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To define a Copy task we specify the files we want to copy and to which directory. This definition is a CopySpec instance. It contains the rules that defines what we want to copy. The archive tasks Jar, Zip and Tar also use a CopySpec instance.
When we create a task of type Copy we get a task object that implements the CopySpec interface. We can use all the methods from this interface to extend our recipe for copying tasks. In the following build file we first define the task website. We use CopySpec methods to configure the task. Then we define a task deploy of type Sync that also implements the CopySpec interface.
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We can change the frames and grid of tables we define in Asciidoctor. We use the frames attribute to change the outside frame of a table. We can choose between topbot for top and bottom, sides for only a frame at the sides of the table, none if we don't want a frame. The default value all create a frame around our table with top, sides and bottom.
To change the inner grid of a table we use the grids table attribute. The default value all displays a grid for columns and rows inside the table. The value cols only displays a grid between columns, value rows display a grid between rows and with value none there will be no grid inside our table.
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Since Asciidoctor 1.5.0 we can use extensions when we write AsciiDoc documents. These extensions can be written in Ruby or any JVM language. If we use Gradle and the Asciidoctor Gradle plugin to transform our documents we can use both extensions. Of course an extension written in for example Java or Groovy can be included as a regular dependency in our build configuration. As the extension is on the classpath of the asciidoctor task then it can be used. When the extension is a Ruby extension and available as a Ruby gem we need some more configuration in our build file. To use an Asciidoctor extension written in Ruby in our build we must first make sure that we can download the extension. Then we can configure the asciidoctor task from the Asciidoctor Gradle plugin to use the extension.
Let's start with a sample Asciidoctor document which uses the Asciidoctor Diagram extension. With this extension we can embed diagrams as text in our document and get graphical images as output.
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In a previous post we learned how to use Asciidoc markup in a table. The a character is just one of many styles we can define in our table. In this blog post we see which style options we have. We can either use the cols attribute to define a style for a whole column or specify per cell the style.
We can use the following styles:
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When we define a table in Asciidoctor the columns all have the same width and the table will the whole width of the page. Of course we can change this when we define the table. We can change the table width with the width attribute. We specify the column width with the cols attribute.
First we will change the width of the columns. We can specify proportional integer values or a percentage to specify the width of a column. In the following sample Asciidoctor file we use proportional values in the first table. The first column has value 1 and the second column value 3. This means the second column should be 3 times as wide as the first column. In the second table the column width is defined with percentage values. The first column should occupy 60% of the table width and the last column the rest.
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When we define a table in Asciidoctor and want to use Asciidoc in a table cell it is not interpreted as Asciidoc by default. The text is literally shown and this might not be what we expect. But we can force Asciidoctor to interpret the cell contents as Asciidoctor.
Let's start with a very simple table. The last cell of the first row contains some Asciidoc markup:
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