Fixing False Positives In AsciiDoc DITA Vale Rules

Hey Guys, Let's Talk About Vale and AsciiDoc: Understanding the Core Challenge

Hey everyone! Let's dive right in and chat about something super important for anyone wrangling documentation: the wonderful world of Vale and its interaction with AsciiDoc. You see, Vale is this incredibly powerful tool, a linter, that helps us keep our writing consistent, clear, and perfectly aligned with our style guides. It's like having a super diligent editor checking every single word, every heading, every ID to make sure everything is just right. For teams working with AsciiDoc, integrating Vale can be a total game-changer, ensuring high-quality, standardized output, especially when we're thinking about structured content like DITA. But here's the rub, guys: sometimes, even the smartest tools can get a little confused. We're talking about false positives – those moments when Vale flags something as an error, but in reality, it's perfectly valid AsciiDoc. This isn't just a minor annoyance; it can seriously impact our workflow. Imagine spending precious time fixing something that wasn't broken to begin with, or worse, starting to doubt the linter's judgment. When false positives pop up too often, it can erode trust in the tool, making writers ignore its suggestions, which defeats the whole purpose of having a linter in the first place, right? AsciiDoc itself is a fantastic markup language, known for its readability and flexibility. It offers various ways to achieve similar results, which is a strength, but it can also be a challenge for linters designed for strict patterns. This flexibility means that sometimes, a linter rule, designed with a common best practice in mind, might inadvertently flag a less common but still perfectly valid piece of AsciiDoc syntax. Today, we're going to zero in on two specific instances where our new AsciiDoc DITA Vale rules might be getting a little too enthusiastic: issues related to DocumentId and DocumentTitle. We'll explore why these are appearing as false positives and brainstorm some really smart solutions to make our Vale setup even better and more human-friendly. It's all about making our tools work for us, not against us, and ensuring our documentation workflow is as smooth and efficient as possible. So, buckle up, because we're about to make our Vale rules smarter and our documentation efforts much less frustrating. This discussion is all about refining our setup to ensure accuracy and maintain that precious trust in our automated checks. We want our Vale linter to be an ally, not an overzealous critic!

Diving Deep into DocumentId: The Case of Unquoted IDs

Let's kick things off by taking a really close look at DocumentId and a specific scenario that's causing some head-scratching. We're talking about those unique identifiers that give our AsciiDoc elements their distinct presence.

What's the Deal with DocumentId in AsciiDoc?

So, what exactly is DocumentId and why is it such a big deal in AsciiDoc? Well, guys, a DocumentId is essentially the unique label for a block or section within your AsciiDoc document. Think of it as a permanent address. These IDs are crucial for a bunch of reasons: they enable cross-referencing within and across documents, they're essential for linking, and they play a vital role in semantic structuring, especially when you're working with more complex publishing workflows like DITA. Without proper IDs, your documents would be a jumbled mess, impossible to navigate programmatically or for readers looking for specific information. AsciiDoc gives us a couple of primary ways to define these IDs. The most common and often recommended syntax is using square brackets with quotes around the ID value, like this: [id="my-unique-id"]. You might also see the shorthand [[my-unique-id]], which essentially does the same job. This approach is widely adopted because it's super clear and handles special characters within the ID gracefully. However, here's where our linter, Vale, sometimes gets a little too prescriptive. We've noticed that Vale is flagging IDs that don't use quotes around the value, for example, [id=my-id]. It’s treating this as an error, but here’s the kicker: according to the AsciiDoc specification, this syntax is often perfectly valid! Our documents, like many others out there, mostly stick to the quoted format, which is great for consistency. But occasionally, perhaps due to different authoring styles, legacy content, or specific tool-generated output, these unquoted IDs pop up. The problem arises when our linter, which is designed to help us, starts pointing fingers at something that’s technically correct. This leads to what we call a false positive, where a valid construct is incorrectly identified as an issue. This can be genuinely frustrating for writers and slows down the review process because we're constantly having to verify if the 'error' is actually an error or just Vale being a little too strict. We need to find a way to make Vale understand that while quoted IDs might be our preferred style, unquoted ones aren't necessarily wrong in the eyes of AsciiDoc itself.

The AsciiDoc Specification vs. Linter Strictness

Now, let's really dig into the nitty-gritty of why this DocumentId issue is a classic example of the tension between a flexible markup language and a strict linter. AsciiDoc, bless its heart, is known for its incredible flexibility. It often provides multiple, valid ways to express the same thing. This is a huge advantage for authors, allowing them to choose syntax that feels most natural or fits specific contexts. For DocumentId attributes, while [id="my-id"] is undoubtedly the most common and often recommended way to declare an ID, particularly because it robustly handles IDs with spaces or special characters, the specification itself doesn't always mandate quotes for simple, alphanumeric IDs. So, when Vale, our diligent linter, throws an error at [id=my-id], it's not necessarily because the AsciiDoc is broken. Instead, it's likely because the Vale rule for DocumentId was designed to enforce a best practice or a specific style guide requirement: that all IDs should be quoted. And there are genuinely good reasons for this best practice! Quoted IDs offer superior clarity, reduce potential ambiguity, and ensure that your IDs are future-proof, even if you decide to include characters that would otherwise break an unquoted ID. They also tend to improve consistency across a large documentation set, which is a major win for maintainability and automated processing. However, the dilemma arises when our team's specific usage occasionally deviates from this strict rule, yet remains within the bounds of valid AsciiDoc. Vale's strictness, while well-intentioned, clashes with the language's inherent flexibility. This isn't a flaw in Vale itself, but rather a configuration challenge. It highlights the need to fine-tune our linting rules to perfectly match our specific project's needs and acceptable syntax variations. We want to catch actual errors and deviations from our chosen style, but we definitely don't want to penalize perfectly valid syntax, just because it's not the most common or most robust form. The goal is to strike that perfect balance between maintaining high standards through best practices and accommodating the occasional, valid stylistic choices that might exist within our content. Overly strict rules that generate false positives can lead to