Docutils FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) (original) (raw)

Date:

2025-04-29

Revision:

10113

Web site:

https://docutils.sourceforge.io/

Copyright:

This document has been placed in the public domain.

Contents

This is a work in progress. If you are reading a local copy, themaster copy might be newer. This document uses relative links; if they don't work, please use the master copy.

Please feel free to ask questions and/or provide answers; send email to the Docutils-users mailing list. Project members should feel free to edit the source text file directly.

1 Docutils

1.1 What is Docutils?

Docutils is a system for processing plaintext documentation into useful formats, such as HTML, XML, and LaTeX. It supports multiple types of input, such as standalone files, PEPs (Python Enhancement Proposals), and string input. Client code may add other input types, e.g. Sphinx comes with an extension to extract inline documentation from Python modules and packages.

The Docutils distribution consists of:

For an overview of the Docutils project implementation, see PEP 258, "Docutils Design Specification".

Docutils is implemented in Python.

1.2 Why is it called "Docutils"?

Docutils is short for "Python Documentation Utilities". The name "Docutils" was inspired by "Distutils", the Python Distribution Utilities architected by Greg Ward, a component of Python's standard library.

The earliest known use of the term "docutils" in a Python context was a fleeting reference in a message by Fred Drake on 1999-12-02 in the Python Doc-SIG mailing list. It was suggested as a project name on 2000-11-27 on Doc-SIG, again by Fred Drake, in response to a question from Tony "Tibs" Ibbs: "What do we want to call this thing?". This was shortly after David Goodger first announced reStructuredText on Doc-SIG.

Tibs used the name "Docutils" for his effort "to document what the Python docutils package should support, with a particular emphasis on documentation strings". Tibs joined the current project (and its predecessors) and graciously donated the name.

For more history of reStructuredText and the Docutils project, see An Introduction to reStructuredText.

Please note that the name is "Docutils", not "DocUtils" or "Doc-Utils" or any other variation. It is pronounced as in "DOCumentation UTILitieS", with emphasis on the first syllable.

1.3 Is there a GUI authoring environment for Docutils?

See the links to editors supporting reStructuredText.

1.4 What is the status of the Docutils project?

Docutils is mainly stable, with documented APIs and architecture subject to change after announcement and a transition period.

We fix bugs as they are reported. This means the code from therepository (or the snapshots) is the most stable as well as the most featureful most of the time.

1.5 What is the Docutils project release policy?

Besides the regular releases, we provide automatically-generatedsnapshots which always contain the latest code from the repository. As the project matures, we may formalize on a stable/development-branch scheme, but we're not using anything like that yet.

1.6 How can I get a new feature into Docutils?

2 reStructuredText

2.1 What is reStructuredText?

reStructuredText is an easy-to-read, what-you-see-is-what-you-get plaintext markup syntax and parser system. The reStructuredText parser is a component of Docutils. reStructuredText is a revision and reinterpretation of the StructuredText and Setext lightweight markup systems.

If you are reading this on the web, you can see for yourself. The source for this FAQ is written in reStructuredText; open it in another window and compare them side by side.

A ReStructuredText Primer and the Quick reStructuredText user reference are a good place to start. The reStructuredText Markup Specification is a detailed technical specification.

2.2 Why is it called "reStructuredText"?

The name came from a combination of "StructuredText", one of reStructuredText's predecessors, with "re": "revised", "reworked", and "reinterpreted", and as in the re.py regular expression module. For a detailed history of reStructuredText and the Docutils project, see An Introduction to reStructuredText.

"reStructuredText" is ONE word, not two!

2.3 What's the standard abbreviation for "reStructuredText"?

"RST" (or "rST") and "ReST" (or "reST") are both acceptable. Care should be taken with capitalization, to avoid confusion with "REST", an acronym for "Representational State Transfer".

2.4 What's the standard filename extension for a reStructuredText file?

The most commonly used extensions are ".rst" and ".txt".

Also see What's the official MIME type for reStructuredText data?

2.5 Are there any reStructuredText editor extensions?

See the list of editors supporting reStructuredText.

2.6 How can I indicate the document title? Subtitle?

A uniquely-adorned section title at the beginning of a document is treated specially, as the document title. Similarly, a uniquely-adorned section title immediately after the document title becomes the document subtitle. For example:

This is the Document Title

This is the Document Subtitle

Here's an ordinary paragraph.

See also A reStructuredText Primerand the reStructuredText Markup Specification.

2.7 How can I represent esoteric characters (e.g. character entities) in a document?

For example, say you want an em-dash (XML character entity —, Unicode character U+2014) in your document.

ReStructuredText has no character entity subsystem. [1]However, Docutils uses Unicode so you use a literal character (e.g. a "real" em-dash) for all charactes supported by theinput encoding (by default "UTF-8").

If you are restricted to 7-bit ASCII or a legacy encoding, there is a workaround:Standard Substitution Definition Sets provide equivalents of XML & HTML character entity sets as substitution definitions. [2]For example, the Japanese yen currency symbol can be used as follows:

.. include:: <xhtml1-lat1.txt>

|yen| 600 for a complete meal? That's cheap!

You can also create custom substitution definitions in your document using the "unicode" directive, e.g.:

.. |--| unicode:: U+2013 .. en dash .. |---| unicode:: U+2014 .. em dash, trimming surrounding whitespace :trim:

Now you can write dashes using pure ASCII: "foo |--| bar; foo |---| bar", rendered as "foo – bar; foo—bar". The :trim: option for the em dash is necessary because you cannot write "foo|---|bar"; thus you need to add spaces ("foo |---| bar") and advise the reStructuredText parser to trim the spaces.

2.8 How can I generate backticks using a Scandinavian keyboard?

The use of backticks in reStructuredText is a bit awkward with Scandinavian keyboards, where the backtick is a "dead" key. To get one ` character one must press SHIFT-` + SPACE.

Unfortunately, with all the variations out there, there's no way to please everyone. For Scandinavian programmers and technical writers, this is not limited to reStructuredText but affects many languages and environments.

Possible solutions include

If anyone knows of other/better solutions, please let us know.

2.9 Are there any tools for HTML/XML-to-reStructuredText? (Round-tripping)

People have tossed the idea around, and some implementations of reStructuredText-generating tools can be found in the Docutils Links.

There's no reason why reStructuredText should not be round-trippable to/from XML; any technicalities which prevent round-tripping would be considered bugs. Whitespace would not be identical, but paragraphs shouldn't suffer. The tricky parts would be the smaller details, like links and IDs and other bookkeeping.

For HTML, true round-tripping may not be possible. Even adding lots of extra "class" attributes may not be enough. A "simple HTML" to RST filter is possible -- for some definition of "simple HTML" -- but HTML is used as dumb formatting so much that such a filter may not be particularly useful. An 80/20 approach should work though: build a tool that does 80% of the work automatically, leaving the other 20% for manual tweaks.

2.10 Are there any Wikis that use reStructuredText syntax?

Yes, see Wikis in the Docutils Links.

2.11 Are there any Weblog (Blog) projects that use reStructuredText syntax?

With no implied endorsement or recommendation, and in no particular order:

Please let us know of any other reStructuredText Blogs.

2.12 How should I mark up lists?

Bullet & enumerated list markup is very intuitive but there are 2 points that must be noted:

  1. Lists should not be indented. This is correct:
    paragraph
  1. There must be blank lines around list items, except between items of the same level, where blank lines are optional. The example above shows this.

Note that formatting of the output is independent of the input, and is decided by the writer and the stylesheet. For instance, lists_are_ indented in HTML output by default. See How are lists formatted in HTML? for details.

2.13 Could lists be indented without generating block quotes?

Some people like to write lists with indentation but don't intend a blockquote context. There has been a lot of discussion about allowing this in reStructuredText, but there are some issues that would need to be resolved before it could be implemented. There is a summary of the issues and pointers to the discussions in the to-do list.

2.14 Could the requirement for blank lines around lists be relaxed?

Short answer: no.

In reStructuredText, it would be impossible to unambiguously mark up and parse lists without blank lines before and after. Deeply nested lists may look ugly with so many blank lines, but it's a price we pay for unambiguous markup. Some other plaintext markup systems do not require blank lines in nested lists, but they have to compromise somehow, either accepting ambiguity or requiring extra complexity. For example, Epytext does not require blank lines around lists, but it does require that lists be indented and that ambiguous cases be escaped.

2.15 How can I include mathematical equations in documents?

Use LaTeX math syntax in a math directive or math role.

2.16 Is nested inline markup possible?

Not currently, no. It's on the to-do list (details here), and hopefully will be part of the reStructuredText parser soon. At that time, markup like this will become possible:

Here is some emphasized text containing a hyperlink_ and inline literals.

There are workarounds, but they are either convoluted or ugly or both. They are not recommended.

2.17 How to indicate a line break or a significant newline?

Line blocks are designed for address blocks, verse, and other cases where line breaks are significant and must be preserved. Unlike literal blocks, the typeface is not changed, and inline markup is recognized. For example:

| A one, two, a one two three four | | Half a bee, philosophically, | must, ipso facto, half not be. | But half the bee has got to be, | vis a vis its entity. D'you see? | | But can a bee be said to be | or not to be an entire bee, | when half the bee is not a bee, | due to some ancient injury? | | Singing...

Here's a workaround for manually inserting explicit line breaks in HTML output:

.. |br| raw:: html


I want to break this line here: |br| this is after the break.

If the extra whitespace bothers you, |br|\ backslash-escape it.

2.18 A URL containing asterisks doesn't work. What to do?

Asterisks are valid URL characters (see RFC 2396), sometimes used in URLs. For example:

http://cvs.example.org/viewcvs.py/*checkout*/module/file

Unfortunately, the parser thinks the asterisks are indicating emphasis. The slashes serve as delineating punctuation, allowing the asterisks to be recognized as markup. The example above is separated by the parser into a truncated URL, an emphasized word, and some regular text:

http://cvs.example.org/viewcvs.py/ checkout /module/file

To turn off markup recognition, use a backslash to escape at least the first asterisk, like this:

http://cvs.example.org/viewcvs.py/\*checkout*/module/file

Escaping the second asterisk doesn't hurt, but it isn't necessary.

2.19 How can I make a literal block with some formatting?

Use the parsed-literal directive.

Scenario: a document contains some source code, which calls for a literal block to preserve linebreaks and whitespace. But part of the source code should be formatted, for example as emphasis or as a hyperlink. This calls for a parsed literal block:

.. parsed-literal::

print "Hello world!" # tricky code [1]_

The emphasis (*tricky*) and footnote reference ([1]_) will be parsed.

2.20 Can reStructuredText be used for web or generic templating?

Docutils and reStructuredText can be used with or as a component of a templating system, but they do not themselves include templating functionality. Templating should simply be left to dedicated templating systems. Users can choose a templating system to apply to their reStructuredText documents as best serves their interests.

There are many good templating systems for Python (ht2html, YAPTU,Quixote's PTL, Cheetah, etc.; see this non-exhaustive list of some other templating systems), and many more for other languages, each with different approaches. We invite you to try several and find one you like. If you adapt it to use Docutils/reStructuredText, please consider contributing the code to Docutils or let us know and we'll keep a list here.

One reST-specific web templating system is rest2web, a tool for automatically building websites, or parts of websites.

2.21 How can I mark up a FAQ or other list of questions & answers?

There is no specific syntax for FAQs and Q&A lists. Here are two options:

  1. For a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions, usually with answers), a convenient way to mark up the questions is as section titles, with the answer(s) as section content. This document is marked up in this way.
    The advantages of using section titles for questions are: sections can be numbered automatically, and a table of contents can be generated automatically. One limitation of this format is that questions must fit on one line (section titles may not wrap, in the source text). For very long questions, the title may be a summary of the question, with the full question in the section body.
  2. Field lists work well as Q&A lists:
    :Q: What kind of questions can we
    put here?
    :A: Any kind we like!
    In order to separate questions, lists can be used:
    1. Q:
      What kind of question can we put here?
      A:
      Any kind we like!
    2. Q:
      How many answers can a question have?
      A:
      It can have one,
      A:
      or more.
      A3:
      Answers can be numbered like this.
      A:
      1. Or like this.
    2. We're flexible!

If you don't want to number or otherwise mark questions, you can use an empty comment between individual field lists to separate them:
:Q: First question?
:A: Answer.
..
:Q: Second question?
:A: Answer.

2.22 How can I mark up a TODO list?

You may use a field list with class argument and some CSS styling. For an example see Docutils TODO lists and its source todo-lists.rst.

2.23 Can I produce documents in right-to-left languages?

Languages written from right to left, such as Arabic and Hebrew, must be reordered according to the Unicode Bidi Algorithm. This requires support from the editor and special markup in the output format.

The source format of reStructuredText is relatively bidi-friendly: most constructs are denoted by punctuation without intrusion of English and when you must write in English, it's usually on a separate line. So any editor that auto-detects direction per-line (like gedit or geresh) will suffice.

Moreover, it's possible to translate all reStructuredText keywords. Docutils 0.17 includes translations for Arab, Hebrew, and Persian/Farsi. This should allow reasonable use of editors limited to a single base direction for the whole document (like Notepad, Vim and text boxes in Firefox).

The second problem is bidi markup of the output. There is an almost transparent implicit solution for HTML:

There is also an explicit way to set directions through CSS and classes in the HTML:

LaTeX is quite hard to implement (it doesn't support the bidi algorithm, so all direction changes - even numbers in RTL text - must be explicitly marked). Other formats are more-or-less easy.

If you have any questions/problems/bugs related to bidi with docutils, ask Beni Cherniavsky directly or the Docutils-users mailing list.

2.24 What's the official MIME type for reStructuredText data?

While there is no registered MIME type for reStructuredText, the "official unofficial" standard MIME type is "text/x-rst". [3] This was invented for the build system for PEPs (Python Enhancement Proposals), and it's used by the python.org web site build system.

Also see What's the standard filename extension for a reStructuredText file?

2.25 How can I specify an image grid?

In order to arrange images (or other content) in a grid, a borderless list table can be used. For example:

.. list-table:: :class: borderless

Use figures, if you want also captions:

.. list-table:: :class: borderless

3 HTML Writer

3.1 What is the status of the HTML Writer?

The default HTML Writer module, html4css1, is a proof-of-concept reference implementation. While it is a complete implementation, some aspects of the HTML it produces may be outdated or incompatible with older browsers or specialized applications (such as web templating).

The html5 writer generates semantic HTML output compatible with HTML5. For the full selection see Docutils HTML writers

3.2 What browsers are supported?

No specific browser is targeted; all modern graphical browsers should work. Some older browsers, text-only browsers, and browsers without full CSS support are known to produce inferior results. Firefox, Safari, Opera, Chrome, Edge, and MS Internet Explorer (version 5.0 and up) are known to give good results. Reports of experiences with other browsers are welcome.

3.3 Unexpected results from rst2html: H1, H1 instead of H1, H2. Why?

This only regards output from the html4css1 writer and is configurable via the initial_header_level setting.

details

Here's the question in full:

I have this text:

Heading 1

All my life, I wanted to be H1.

Heading 1.1

But along came H1, and so shouldn't I be H2? No! I'm H1!

Heading 1.1.1

Yeah, imagine me, I'm stuck at H3! No?!?

When I run it through rst2html4, I get unexpected results (below). I was expecting H1, H2, then H3; instead, I get H1, H1, H2:

...

... Heading 1

Heading 1

<-- first H1

All my life, I wanted to be H1.

Heading 1.1

<-- H1

But along came H1, and so now I must be H2.

Heading 1.1.1

Yeah, imagine me, I'm stuck at H3!

...

What gives?

Check the "class" attribute on the H1 tags, and you will see a difference. The first H1 is actually

; this is the document title, and the default stylesheet renders it centered. There can also be an

for the document subtitle.

If there's only one highest-level section title at the beginning of a document, it is treated specially, as the document title. (Similarly, a lone second-highest-level section title may become the document subtitle.) See How can I indicate the document title? Subtitle? for details. Rather than use a plain H1 for the document title, we use

so that we can use H1 again within the document. Why do we do this? HTML only has H1-H6, so by making H1 do double duty, we effectively reserve these tags to provide 6 levels of heading beyond the single document title.

With "html4css1", HTML is being used for dumb formatting for nothing but final display. A stylesheet is required, and one is provided; see Docutils HTML writers. Of course, you're welcome to roll your own. The default stylesheet provides rules to format

and

differently from ordinary

and

:

h1.title { text-align: center }

h2.subtitle { text-align: center }

If you don't want the top section heading to be interpreted as a title at all, disable the doctitle_xform setting (--no-doc-title option). This will interpret your document differently from the standard settings, which might not be a good idea. If you don't like the reuse of the H1 in the HTML output, you can tweak the initial_header_level setting (--initial-header-level option) -- but unless you match its value to your specific document, you might end up with bad HTML (e.g. H3 without H2).

(Thanks to Mark McEahern for the question and much of the answer.)

3.4 How are lists formatted in HTML?

If list formatting looks strange, first check that you understandlist markup.

             * simple  
             * simple  
    * simple

text after a nested list

3.5 Why do enumerated lists only use numbers (no letters or roman numerals)?

In HTML, the rendering of enumerators (the numbers or letters acting as list markers) is completely governed by the stylesheet, so either the browser can't find the stylesheet (try enabling theembed_stylesheet setting [--embed-stylesheet option]), or the browser can't understand it (try a not too old Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari, Edge, or even MSIE).

3.6 There appear to be garbage characters in the HTML. What's up?

What you're seeing is most probably not garbage, but the result of a mismatch between the actual encoding of the HTML output and the encoding your browser is expecting. Your browser is misinterpreting the HTML data, which is encoded text. A discussion of text encodings is beyond the scope of this FAQ; see one or more of these documents for more info:

The common case is with the default output encoding (UTF-8), when using symbol-footnotes. Most footnote symbols are not available in ASCII. When encoded with UTF-8 and viewed with ordinary ASCII tools, these characters will appear to be multi-character garbage.

You may have an decoding problem in your browser (or editor, etc.). The encoding of the output is set to UTF-8, but your browser isn't recognizing that. You can either try to fix your browser (enable "UTF-8 character set", sometimes called "Unicode"), or choose a different output-encoding. You can also try--output-encoding=ascii:xmlcharrefreplace for HTML or XML, but not applicable to non-XMLish outputs.

If you're generating document fragments, the "Content-Type" metadata (between the HTML and tags) must agree with the encoding of the rest of the document. For UTF-8, it should be:

Also, Docutils normally generates an XML declaration as the first line of the output. It must also match the document encoding. For UTF-8:

3.7 How can I retrieve the body of the HTML document?

(This is usually needed when using Docutils in conjunction with a templating system.)

You can use the docutils.core.publish_parts() function, which returns a dictionary containing an 'html_body' entry.

3.8 Why is the Docutils XHTML served as "Content-type: text/html"?

Full question:

Docutils' HTML output looks like XHTML and is advertised as such:

But this is followed by:

Shouldn't this be "application/xhtml+xml" instead of "text/html"?

Short answer: if we didn't serve XHTML as "text/html" (which is a perfectly valid thing to do), it couldn't be viewed in Internet Explorer.

Long answer: In a perfect web, the Docutils XHTML output would be 100% strict XHTML. But it's not a perfect web, and a major source of imperfection is Internet Explorer. When the "html4css1" writer was created, IE represented the overwhelming majority of web browsers "in the wild". The behaviour is kept for backwards compatibility while modern, semantic HTML output is available with the "html5" writer.

(Thanks to Martin F. Krafft, Robert Kern, Michael Foord, and Alan G. Isaac.)

4 Python Source Reader

4.1 Can I use Docutils for Python auto-documentation?

Yes, in conjunction with other projects.

The Sphinx documentation generator includes an autodoc module.

Version 2.0 of Ed Loper's Epydocsupports reStructuredText-format docstrings for HTML output. Docutils 0.3 or newer is required.

Development of a Docutils-specific auto-documentation tool is suspended.

5 Miscellaneous

5.1 Is the Docutils document model based on any existing XML models?

Not directly, no. It borrows bits from DocBook, HTML, and others. I (David Goodger) have designed several document models over the years, and have my own biases. The Docutils document model is designed for simplicity and extensibility, and has been influenced by the needs of the reStructuredText markup.

5.2 How to make code contributions that are easily accepted

The developers will make sure that contributions fit nicely into Docutils. This might involve discussing (and compromising on) design and implementation details. It might also lead to the conclusion that the addition fits better in the extensions and related projects.