Asciidoc FX 1.5.6

Asciidoc FX is a multi-platform book editor that you can use to create books in HTML, PDF, Mobi and Epub formats. You can also use it to create various documents and slides. The software provides real-time previews of what is being created. This review focuses on Asciidoc FX for Windows.

Using Asciidoc FX for Windows

We downloaded the latest release of Asciidoc FX for Windows in ZIP format and extracted the contents to a folder, which had several subfolders. We opened the folder named "bin" and ran the version that we wanted. We could choose between Windows batch file and Shell script, and we opted for the Windows batch file for a start.

The program's graphical user interface was divided into three main parts. The first pane on the left, which we could hide and show, displayed working directories. The editor panel was in the middle while the right panel displayed a preview of the created document.

The "Book" menu allowed us to create a book project. We could choose a sample book, PDF book, docbook or ebook, which gave us the option of Epub and Mobi formats. We started by clicking "Sample Book".

We created a directory for our sample book and selected it. The editor displayed a sample book, whose details we changed with our own. The book was arranged in chapters, and clicking a chapter in the working directory panel displayed the code used in the editor panel and a live preview on the right. We immediately saw the changes that we made on the editor on the preview pane.

We could change the source code format in the editor panel to select the coding language that we wanted to use. The program allowed us to create and insert different features to our book, including tables and images.

The option of adding Idea when creating our books made it easy for us to stay organized.

Once we had created our book the way we wanted, we could generate it in the format that we wanted from the "Book" menu. The program generated the required book fast. It integrated an Epub viewer that allowed us to view books in that format without having to install another application.

Conclusion

Asciidoc FX for Windows is a simple program for creating books in different formats, including PDF, HTML, Epub and Mobi. The software loads, parses and renders documents notably fast. The free book editor is based on JavaFX 8.