reStructuredText (often abbreviated as reST) is an easy-to-read, what-you-see-is-what-you-get plaintext markup syntax and parser system. It is useful for in-line program documentation (such as Python docstrings), for quickly creating simple web pages, and for standalone documents.
reStructuredText is part of the Docutils project. The purpose of the project is to create a set of tools for processing reStructuredText documentation into useful formats, such as HTML, LaTeX, ODT or Unix manpages. Docutils can extract comments and information from Python programs, and format them into various forms of useful program documentation.
The reference implementation of the reST parser is a component of the Docutils text processing framework.
Key Features
- Readable and simple to learn syntax.
- Build a table of contents (via an extension in the Python reference implementation).
- Two ways to include literals, one way to include images.
- Builds a table of contents.
- HTML export and import tools.
- Tables.
- Link titles.
- Class attribute.
- ID attribute.
- Export formats: LaTeX, XML, Man page, HTML (w3c valid), PDF, EPUB, S5, ODF, Devhelp, QT Help, CHM, JSON.
- Popular in the Python community.
- Often used for technical documentation.
Website: docutils.sourceforge.net/rst.html
Support:
Developer: David Goodger
License: Public Domain
Related Software
| Lightweight Markup Languages | |
|---|---|
| Markdown | Markup language and Text-to-HTML conversion tool |
| MultiMarkdown | Based on Markdown with additional features |
| GitHub Flavored Markdown | For user content on GitHub.com and GitHub Enterprise |
| Markdown Extra | Lightweight markup language based on Markdown |
| AsciiDoc | Presentable text document format for writing articles |
| Textile | Billed as a "humane web text generator" |
| Texy | Text-to-XHTML formatter and converter library |
| Tome | Markup Language and Tool Suite for Authors |
| reStructuredText | Markup Syntax and Parser Component of Docutils |
| Haml | Templating engine for HTML |
| JsonML | Map between XML and JSON |
| TOML | Tom’s Obvious Minimal Language |
| Djot | Light markup language inspired by CommonMark |
| Org-mode | Plain text markup for notes, documents, and workflows |
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