Docutils Front-End Tools

docutils

CLI name:

docutils

Readers:

Standalone (default), PEP

Parsers:

reStructuredText (default), Markdown (requires 3rd party packages)

Writers:

html, html4css1, html5 (default), latex2e, manpage, odt, pep_html, pseudo-xml, s5_html, xelatex, xml,

Config:

[docutils application]

Since Docutils 0.19, you can start the generic front end like:

docutils test.rst > test.html

Alternatively, use Python's -m option, or the docutils-cli.py script in the tools/ directory.

The generic front end allows combining "reader", "parser", and "writer" components from the Docutils package or 3rd party plug-ins.

For example, to process a Markdown file "test.md" into Pseudo-XML:

docutils --parser=markdown --writer=pseudoxml test.md > test.rst

Another example is converting a reStructuredText PEP source into a HTML preview [2]:

docutils --reader=pep --writer=pep_html pep-0287.rst > pep-0287.html

The pep_html writer makes use of a "pep-html-template" file and the "pep.css" stylesheet (both in the docutils/writers/pep_html/ directory), but these can be overridden by command-line options or configuration files.

Use the "--help" option together with the component-selection options to get the correct list of supported command-line options. Example:

docutils --parser=markdown --writer=xml --help

rst2html

Reader:

Standalone

Parser:

reStructuredText

Writer:

html

rst2html is the front-end for the default Docutils HTML writer. The default writer may change with the development of HTML, browsers, Docutils, and the web. The current default is html4css1, it will change to html5 in Docutils 2.0.

rst2html4

Reader:

Standalone

Parser:

reStructuredText

Writer:

html4css1

The rst2html4 front end reads standalone reStructuredText source files and produces XHTML 1.0 Transitional output. A CSS stylesheet is required for proper rendering; a simple but complete stylesheet is installed and used by default (see Stylesheets below).

For example, to process a reStructuredText file "test.rst" into HTML:

rst2html test.rst > test.html

Now open the "test.html" file in your favourite browser to see the results. To get a footer with a link to the source file, date & time of processing, and links to the Docutils project, add some options:

rst2html --source-link --time --generator test.rst > test.html

rst2html5

Reader:

Standalone

Parser:

reStructuredText

Writer:

html5

The rst2html5 front end reads standalone reStructuredText source files and produces HTML 5 output. Correct rendering of elements not directly supported by HTML depends on a CSS style sheet. The provided style sheets minimal.css and plain.css define required and optional styling rules respectively.

rst2s5

Reader:

Standalone

Parser:

reStructuredText

Writer:

s5_html

The rst2s5 front end reads standalone reStructuredText source files and produces (X)HTML output compatible with S5, the "Simple Standards-based Slide Show System" by Eric Meyer. A theme is required for proper rendering; several are distributed with Docutils and others are available; see Themes below.

For example, to process a reStructuredText file "slides.rst" into S5/HTML:

rst2s5 slides.rst --output=slides.html

Now open the "slides.html" file in your favourite browser, switch to full-screen mode, and enjoy the results.

rst2s5 --theme medium-black slides.rst --output=slides.html

buildhtml.py

Readers:

Standalone, PEP

Parser:

reStructuredText

Writers:

html, html5, pep_html

Config:

[buildhtml application]

The buildhtml.py script can be found in the /tools directory of the "docutils" source. It is not included in binary packages. [4]

Usage:

buildhtml.py [options] [<directory> ...]

Use buildhtml.py to generate *.html from reStructuredText source files in each <directory> given, and their subdirectories too. The current directory is chosen by default if no directory is specified. Use the --local option to skip all subdirectories. See [buildhtml application] in Docutils Configuration for more specific selection options.

After unpacking the Docutils source package, you can cd into its root directory (docutils-X.Y/ where "X.Y" is the release version, for official releases) and generate HTML pages for all included documentation files with:

tools/buildhtml.py

Some files may generate system messages (docs/user/rst/demo.rst contains intentional errors); use the --quiet option to suppress all warnings.

rst2latex

Reader:

Standalone

Parser:

reStructuredText

Writer:

latex2e

The rst2latex front end reads standalone reStructuredText source files and produces LaTeX output. For example, to process a reStructuredText file "test.rst" into LaTeX:

rst2latex test.rst > test.tex

The output file "test.tex" should then be processed with latex or pdflatex to get a document in DVI, PostScript or PDF format for printing or on-screen viewing.

For details see Generating LaTeX with Docutils.

rst2xetex

Reader:

Standalone

Parser:

reStructuredText

Writer:

xelatex

The rst2xetex front end reads standalone reStructuredText source files and produces LaTeX output for processing with Unicode-aware TeX engines (LuaTeX or XeTeX). For example, to process a reStructuredText file "test.rst" into LaTeX:

rst2xetex test.rst > test.tex

The output file "test.tex" should then be processed with xelatex or lualatex to get a document in PDF format for printing or on-screen viewing.

For details see Generating LaTeX with Docutils.

rst2man

Reader:

Standalone

Parser:

reStructuredText

Writer:

manpage

The rst2man front end reads standalone reStructuredText source files and produces troff sources for Unix man pages.

rst2odt

Reader:

Standalone

Parser:

reStructuredText

Writer:

odt

The rst2odt front end reads standalone reStructuredText source files and produces ODF/.odt files that can be read, edited, printed, etc with OpenOffice oowriter or LibreOffice lowriter. A stylesheet file is required. A stylesheet file is an OpenOffice .odt file containing definitions of the styles required for rst2odt. For details, see Odt Writer for Docutils.

rst2xml

Reader:

Standalone

Parser:

reStructuredText

Writer:

XML (Docutils native)

The rst2xml front end produces Docutils-native XML output. This can be transformed with standard XML tools such as XSLT processors into arbitrary final forms. An example is the xml2rst processor by Stefan Merten.

rst2pseudoxml

Reader:

Standalone

Parser:

reStructuredText

Writer:

Pseudo-XML

rst2pseudoxml is used for debugging the Docutils "Reader to Transform to Writer" pipeline. It produces a compact pretty-printed "pseudo-XML", where nesting is indicated by indentation (no end-tags). External attributes for all elements are output, and internal attributes for any leftover "pending" elements are also given.