ADOC to PNG Converter

AsciiDoc is what happens when lightweight markup grows up. Where Markdown stops at bold and lists, AsciiDoc carries title pages, multi-level sections, callouts, admonitions, xrefs and real table syntax — enough to author entire technical books without leaving plain text. The Git and Linux-kernel documentation ecosystems standardized on it, rendered through Asciidoctor.

The format's weakness is tooling gravity: AsciiDoc converters outside the Asciidoctor/Ruby world are scarce, which is exactly where Pandoc fills the gap. Converting to Word hands manuscripts to editors who live in Office; converting to Markdown feeds modern docs sites. The section structure and tables survive the trip.

PNG was created in 1996 as a free, open replacement for the patent-encumbered GIF, and it has been the reference lossless image format ever since. Pixels are compressed with the DEFLATE algorithm (the same one inside ZIP files), which reproduces the original image exactly — bit-for-bit — while supporting full 8-bit or 16-bit alpha transparency. Screenshots, logos, icons, charts and anything with text or sharp edges should live in PNG.

Because it never discards information, PNG files of photographs are several times larger than JPG — that is the price of perfection. Modern PNG encoders add filters per scanline that make screenshots and flat-color graphics compress surprisingly well. PNG also became the base of APNG, the animation extension that browsers play natively.