Tools - Rst

Write your own Sphinx extension. Contribute to rst-lint . Convert your legacy Markdown docs to RST using Pandoc and automate the whole pipeline.

# Convert a single file rst2html.py mydoc.rst mydoc.html If you write documentation for Python (or nearly any open-source project), you already know Sphinx . It started as a tool for Python documentation but has since become the de facto standard for complex, multi-page RST projects. rst tools

| Feature | RST Tools (Sphinx) | Markdown Tools (MkDocs, Hugo) | | --- | --- | --- | | Cross-references (internal) | Native, robust :ref: | Requires plugins or clumsy IDs | | API doc extraction | autodoc (excellent) | Third-party (e.g., mkdocstrings ) | | Directive system | Extensive, user-extensible | Limited, often platform-specific | | Numbered figures/tables | Built-in | Manual or hacky | | Documentation versioning | Excellent (via RTD) | Varies | Write your own Sphinx extension

If you have a single-page README, use Markdown. For a book-length manual with 100+ pages, indexes, and API references – are far superior. Common Pitfalls and How RST Tools Solve Them Pitfall 1: “My bullet list broke because of inconsistent indentation.” Solution: Run doc8 --max-line-length 89 to catch indentation errors. # Convert a single file rst2html

pip install sphinx rst-lint → Write one page → Build HTML.

“I renamed a heading and now my links are broken.” Solution: Sphinx’s nitpicky = True mode will warn you about every unresolved reference.

In the world of technical documentation, simplicity and power often sit at opposite ends of the spectrum. ReStructuredText (RST) is the rare exception—a lightweight markup language that is both human-readable and extraordinarily extensible. But to truly harness RST, you need the right RST tools .