This section is a brief introduction to reStructuredText (reST) concepts and syntax, intended to provide authors with enough information to author documents productively. Since reST was designed to be a simple, unobtrusive markup language, this will not take too long.
See also
The authoritative reStructuredText User Documentation. The “ref” links in this document link to the description of the individual constructs in the reST reference.
The paragraph (:duref:`ref <paragraphs>`) is the most basic block in a reST document. Paragraphs are simply chunks of text separated by one or more blank lines. As in Python, indentation is significant in reST, so all lines of the same paragraph must be left-aligned to the same level of indentation.
The standard reST inline markup is quite simple: use
If asterisks or backquotes appear in running text and could be confused with inline markup delimiters, they have to be escaped with a backslash.
Be aware of some restrictions of this markup:
These restrictions may be lifted in future versions of the docutils.
reST also allows for custom “interpreted text roles”’, which signify that the enclosed text should be interpreted in a specific way. Sphinx uses this to provide semantic markup and cross-referencing of identifiers, as described in the appropriate section. The general syntax is :rolename:`content`.
Standard reST provides the following roles:
See Inline markup for roles added by Sphinx.
List markup (:duref:`ref <bullet-lists>`) is natural: just place an asterisk at the start of a paragraph and indent properly. The same goes for numbered lists; they can also be autonumbered using a # sign:
* This is a bulleted list.
* It has two items, the second
item uses two lines.
1. This is a numbered list.
2. It has two items too.
#. This is a numbered list.
#. It has two items too.
Nested lists are possible, but be aware that they must be separated from the parent list items by blank lines:
* this is
* a list
* with a nested list
* and some subitems
* and here the parent list continues
Definition lists (:duref:`ref <definition-lists>`) are created as follows:
term (up to a line of text)
Definition of the term, which must be indented
and can even consist of multiple paragraphs
next term
Description.
Note that the term cannot have more than one line of text.
Quoted paragraphs (:duref:`ref <block-quotes>`) are created by just indenting them more than the surrounding paragraphs.
Line blocks (:duref:`ref <line-blocks>`) are a way of preserving line breaks:
| These lines are
| broken exactly like in
| the source file.
There are also several more special blocks available:
Literal code blocks (:duref:`ref <literal-blocks>`) are introduced by ending a paragraph with the special marker ::. The literal block must be indented (and, like all paragraphs, separated from the surrounding ones by blank lines):
This is a normal text paragraph. The next paragraph is a code sample::
It is not processed in any way, except
that the indentation is removed.
It can span multiple lines.
This is a normal text paragraph again.
The handling of the :: marker is smart:
That way, the second sentence in the above example’s first paragraph would be rendered as “The next paragraph is a code sample:”.
Two forms of tables are supported. For grid tables (:duref:`ref <grid-tables>`), you have to “paint” the cell grid yourself. They look like this:
+------------------------+------------+----------+----------+
| Header row, column 1 | Header 2 | Header 3 | Header 4 |
| (header rows optional) | | | |
+========================+============+==========+==========+
| body row 1, column 1 | column 2 | column 3 | column 4 |
+------------------------+------------+----------+----------+
| body row 2 | ... | ... | |
+------------------------+------------+----------+----------+
Simple tables (:duref:`ref <simple-tables>`) are easier to write, but limited: they must contain more than one row, and the first column cannot contain multiple lines. They look like this:
===== ===== =======
A B A and B
===== ===== =======
False False False
True False False
False True False
True True True
===== ===== =======
Use `Link text <http://example.com/>`_ for inline web links. If the link text should be the web address, you don’t need special markup at all, the parser finds links and mail addresses in ordinary text.
You can also separate the link and the target definition (:duref:`ref <hyperlink-targets>`), like this:
This is a paragraph that contains `a link`_.
.. _a link: http://example.com/
Internal linking is done via a special reST role provided by Sphinx, see the section on specific markup, Cross-referencing arbitrary locations.
Section headers (:duref:`ref <sections>`) are created by underlining (and optionally overlining) the section title with a punctuation character, at least as long as the text:
=================
This is a heading
=================
Normally, there are no heading levels assigned to certain characters as the structure is determined from the succession of headings. However, for the Python documentation, this convention is used which you may follow:
Of course, you are free to use your own marker characters (see the reST documentation), and use a deeper nesting level, but keep in mind that most target formats (HTML, LaTeX) have a limited supported nesting depth.
“Explicit markup” (:duref:`ref <explicit-markup-blocks>`) is used in reST for most constructs that need special handling, such as footnotes, specially-highlighted paragraphs, comments, and generic directives.
An explicit markup block begins with a line starting with .. followed by whitespace and is terminated by the next paragraph at the same level of indentation. (There needs to be a blank line between explicit markup and normal paragraphs. This may all sound a bit complicated, but it is intuitive enough when you write it.)
A directive (:duref:`ref <directives>`) is a generic block of explicit markup. Besides roles, it is one of the extension mechanisms of reST, and Sphinx makes heavy use of it.
Docutils supports the following directives:
Admonitions: :dudir:`attention`, :dudir:`caution`, :dudir:`danger`, :dudir:`error`, :dudir:`hint`, :dudir:`important`, :dudir:`note`, :dudir:`tip`, :dudir:`warning` and the generic :dudir:`admonition <admonitions>`. (Most themes style only “note” and “warning” specially.)
Images:
Additional body elements:
Special tables:
Special directives:
HTML specifics:
Influencing markup:
Since these are only per-file, better use Sphinx’ facilities for setting the :confval:`default_role`.
Do not use the directives :dudir:`sectnum`, :dudir:`header` and :dudir:`footer`.
Directives added by Sphinx are described in Sphinx Markup Constructs.
Basically, a directive consists of a name, arguments, options and content. (Keep this terminology in mind, it is used in the next chapter describing custom directives.) Looking at this example,
.. function:: foo(x)
foo(y, z)
:module: some.module.name
Return a line of text input from the user.
function is the directive name. It is given two arguments here, the remainder of the first line and the second line, as well as one option module (as you can see, options are given in the lines immediately following the arguments and indicated by the colons). Options must be indented to the same level as the directive content.
The directive content follows after a blank line and is indented relative to the directive start.
reST supports an image directive (:dudir:`ref <image>`), used like so:
.. image:: gnu.png
(options)
When used within Sphinx, the file name given (here gnu.png) must either be relative to the source file, or absolute which means that they are relative to the top source directory. For example, the file sketch/spam.rst could refer to the image images/spam.png as ../images/spam.png or /images/spam.png.
Sphinx will automatically copy image files over to a subdirectory of the output directory on building (e.g. the _static directory for HTML output.)
Interpretation of image size options (width and height) is as follows: if the size has no unit or the unit is pixels, the given size will only be respected for output channels that support pixels (i.e. not in LaTeX output). Other units (like pt for points) will be used for HTML and LaTeX output.
Sphinx extends the standard docutils behavior by allowing an asterisk for the extension:
.. image:: gnu.*
Sphinx then searches for all images matching the provided pattern and determines their type. Each builder then chooses the best image out of these candidates. For instance, if the file name gnu.* was given and two files gnu.pdf and gnu.png existed in the source tree, the LaTeX builder would choose the former, while the HTML builder would prefer the latter.
Changed in version 0.4: Added the support for file names ending in an asterisk.
Changed in version 0.6: Image paths can now be absolute.
For footnotes (:duref:`ref <footnotes>`), use [#name]_ to mark the footnote location, and add the footnote body at the bottom of the document after a “Footnotes” rubric heading, like so:
Lorem ipsum [#f1]_ dolor sit amet ... [#f2]_
.. rubric:: Footnotes
.. [#f1] Text of the first footnote.
.. [#f2] Text of the second footnote.
You can also explicitly number the footnotes ([1]_) or use auto-numbered footnotes without names ([#]_).
Standard reST citations (:duref:`ref <citations>`) are supported, with the additional feature that they are “global”, i.e. all citations can be referenced from all files. Use them like so:
Lorem ipsum [Ref]_ dolor sit amet.
.. [Ref] Book or article reference, URL or whatever.
Citation usage is similar to footnote usage, but with a label that is not numeric or begins with #.
reST supports “substitutions” (:duref:`ref <substitution-definitions>`), which are pieces of text and/or markup referred to in the text by |name|. They are defined like footnotes with explicit markup blocks, like this:
.. |name| replace:: replacement *text*
or this:
.. |caution| image:: warning.png
:alt: Warning!
See the :duref:`reST reference for substitutions <substitution-definitions>` for details.
If you want to use some substitutions for all documents, put them into :confval:`rst_prolog` or put them into a separate file and include it into all documents you want to use them in, using the include directive. (Be sure to give the include file a file name extension differing from that of other source files, to avoid Sphinx finding it as a standalone document.)
Sphinx defines some default substitutions, see Substitutions.
Every explicit markup block which isn’t a valid markup construct (like the footnotes above) is regarded as a comment (:duref:`ref <comments>`). For example:
.. This is a comment.
You can indent text after a comment start to form multiline comments:
..
This whole indented block
is a comment.
Still in the comment.
Since the easiest way to include special characters like em dashes or copyright signs in reST is to directly write them as Unicode characters, one has to specify an encoding. Sphinx assumes source files to be encoded in UTF-8 by default; you can change this with the :confval:`source_encoding` config value.
There are some problems one commonly runs into while authoring reST documents:
Footnotes
| [1] | When the default domain contains a class directive, this directive will be shadowed. Therefore, Sphinx re-exports it as rst-class. |