Keeping uninteresting code accessible through scrolling

Question

If I process the following asciidoc file with asciidoctor,

Here is our first program:
[source,cpp]
----
// Uninteresting/Potboiler line
// Uninteresting/Potboiler line
// Uninteresting/Potboiler line
// Uninteresting/Potboiler line
// Interesting line
// Interesting line
// Uninteresting/Potboiler line
// Uninteresting/Potboiler line
// Uninteresting/Potboiler line
// Uninteresting/Potboiler line
----

the result looks as follows:

But often (as hinted in the code above) the crux of what's interesting is brief.

In such cases I can keep the entire HTML succinct by quoting just the interesting lines, and adding a link that points to the full source file. This takes the reader out of context, and forces them to go forward/back in the HTML navigation.

I am looking instead for a way to keep the full code accessible through scrolling in the html page, while showing only the interesting bits. Is this possible with asciidoctor?

Answer 1

The answer to your question can be found in the documentation in section 49.1 about includes. For the sake of keeping things all together, I'll also give a brief example here.

Use tags or line section when you do the include. If you use lines it'll look something like:

include::my_file[lines=5..7]

If you decide to use tags (which imo is better as you're less likely to have the two out of sync) it will look like this:

include::my_file[tags=interesting_part]

Then my_file would look like

Uninteresting line
Uninteresting line
Uninteresting line
// tag::interesting_part[]
Interesting line
Interesting line
// end::interesting_part[]
Uninteresting line
Uninteresting line

Use whatever kind of comment is correct for that particular file type in the file to be included.