# Docutils Front-End Tools

Author:

  David Goodger

Contact:
  docutils-develop@lists.sourceforge.net
Revision:
  9993
Date:
  2024-12-04
Copyright:
  This document has been placed in the public domain.

## Introduction

In addition to the generic "docutils" application, Docutils installs a set of small front ends, each specialized for a specific "Reader" (which knows how to interpret a file in context), "Parser" (which understands the syntax of the text), and "Writer" (which knows how to generate a specific data format).

Note

Docutils front-end tool names, install details and the set of auto-installed tools changed in Docutils 0.21 (see the RELEASE-NOTES).

Most [1] front-end tools have common options and the same command-line usage pattern:

    <toolname> [options] [<source> [<destination>]]

See the tools below for concrete examples.

Each tool has a "--help" option which lists the command-line options and arguments it supports. Processing can also be customized with configuration files.

The two arguments, "source" and "destination", are optional. If only one argument (source) is specified, the standard output (stdout) is used for the destination. If no arguments are specified, the standard input (stdin) is used for the source.

[1]

The exception is buildhtml.py.

Note

The command line usage pattern will change over the next releases.

See Future changes in the RELEASE-NOTES.

### Getting Help

First, try the "--help" option each front-end tool has.

Command line options and their corresponding configuration file entries are detailed in Docutils Configuration.

Users who have questions or need assistance with Docutils or reStructuredText should post a message to the Docutils-users mailing list.

## The Tools

### Generic Command Line Front End

#### 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

[2]

The rendering of published PEPs is done by a Sphinx-based build system (see PEP 676).

### HTML-Generating Tools

#### 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.

Caution!

Use a specific front end like rst2html4 or rst2html5, if you depend on stability of the generated HTML code (e.g., because you use a custom style sheet or post-processing that may break otherwise).

#### 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

##### Stylesheets

rst2html inserts into the generated HTML a cascading stylesheet (or a link to a stylesheet, when passing the "--link-stylesheet" option). A stylesheet is required for proper rendering. The default stylesheet (docutils/writers/html4css1/html4css1.css, located in the installation directory) is provided for basic use.

To use different stylesheet(s), specify the stylesheets' location(s) as comma-separated list with the "--stylesheet" or "--stylesheet-path" options. To experiment with styles, please see the guide to writing HTML (CSS) stylesheets for Docutils.

#### 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.

##### Themes

Each S5 theme consists of a directory containing several files: stylesheets, JavaScript, and graphics. These are copied into a ui/<theme> directory beside the generated HTML. [3] A theme is chosen using the "--theme" option (for themes that come with Docutils) or the "--theme-url" option (for themes anywhere). For example, the "medium-black" theme can be specified as follows:

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

The theme will be copied [3] to the ui/medium-black directory.

Several themes are included with Docutils:

default

  This is a simplified version of S5's default theme.

  Main content:

    black serif text on a white background

  Text capacity:

    about 13 lines

  Headers:

    light blue, bold sans-serif text on a dark blue background; titles are limited to one line

  Footers:

    small, gray, bold sans-serif text on a dark blue background

small-white

  (Small text on a white background.)

  Main content:

    black serif text on a white background

  Text capacity:

    about 15 lines

  Headers:

    black, bold sans-serif text on a white background; titles wrap

  Footers:

    small, dark gray, bold sans-serif text on a white background

small-black
  Main content:

    white serif text on a black background

  Text capacity:

    about 15 lines

  Headers:

    white, bold sans-serif text on a black background; titles wrap

  Footers:

    small, light gray, bold sans-serif text on a black background

medium-white
  Main content:

    black serif text on a white background

  Text capacity:

    about 9 lines

  Headers:

    black, bold sans-serif text on a white background; titles wrap

  Footers:

    small, dark gray, bold sans-serif text on a white background

medium-black
  Main content:

    white serif text on a black background

  Text capacity:

    about 9 lines

  Headers:

    white, bold sans-serif text on a black background; titles wrap

  Footers:

    small, light gray, bold sans-serif text on a black background

big-white
  Main content:

    black, bold sans-serif text on a white background

  Text capacity:

    about 5 lines

  Headers:

    black, bold sans-serif text on a white background; titles wrap

  Footers:

    not displayed

big-black
  Main content:

    white, bold sans-serif text on a black background

  Text capacity:

    about 5 lines

  Headers:

    white, bold sans-serif text on a black background; titles wrap

  Footers:

    not displayed

If a theme directory contains a file named __base__, the name of the theme's base theme will be read from it. Files are accumulated from the named theme, any base themes, and the "default" theme (which is the implicit base of all themes).

For details, please see Easy Slide Shows With reStructuredText & S5.

[3] (1,2)

Theme files can only be copied by Docutils, if the output path is specified.

#### buildhtml.py

Readers:

  Standalone, PEP

Parser:

  reStructuredText

Writers:

  html, html5, pep_html

Config:

  [buildhtml application]

In Debian this tool is installed under the name rst-buildhtml.

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

Usage:

    rst-buildhtml [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.

[4]

The Debian package "python3-docutils" includes the script under the name rst-buildhtml.

### LaTeX-Generating Tools

#### 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.

### Man-Page-Generating Tools

#### rst2man

Reader:

  Standalone

Parser:

  reStructuredText

Writer:

  manpage

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

### OpenDocument-Generating Tools

#### 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.

### reStructuredText-Generating Tools

Currently, there is no reStructuredText writer in Docutils and therefore an rst2rst tool is still missing.

To generate reStructuredText documents with Docutils, you can use the XML (Docutils native) writer and the xml2rst processor.

### XML-Generating Tools

#### 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.

### Testing/Debugging Tools

#### 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.

## Customization

All front-end tools support the options/settings from the generic configuration file sections plus the sections of their components (reader, writer, parser). Some front-end tools also add application-specific settings.

### Command-Line Options

Command-line options are intended for one-off customization. They take priority over configuration file settings.

Use the --help option on each of the front ends to list the command-line options it supports.

### Configuration Files

Configuration files are used for persistent customization; they can be set once and take effect every time you use a front-end tool.

Command-line options and their corresponding configuration file entry names are listed in the Docutils Configuration document.