reStructuredText is a lightweight markup language for writing technical documentation, software manuals and other structured documents in plain text.
Developed as part of the Docutils project, reStructuredText provides a readable authoring syntax together with a formal document-processing model. Its principal applications include documentation embedded in source code, standalone technical articles and larger documentation collections.
reStructuredText distinguishes between ordinary document structures and specialised elements introduced through directives and interpreted text roles. This makes the language extensible without requiring changes to its core syntax whenever a new documentation feature is needed.
Directives introduce block-level constructs, while roles attach meaning to individual spans of text. Documentation processors can define additional roles and directives appropriate to their particular publishing environment.
The Docutils parser transforms reStructuredText into a document tree. Writers then convert that representation into formats including HTML, LaTeX, XML and manual pages. This separates document interpretation from output generation.
reStructuredText is also supported by Sphinx, which extends the language for multi-document projects. Sphinx adds facilities such as references between documents, specialised documentation domains and automatically generated indexes.
The language is especially useful for projects that need to maintain documentation alongside source code and publish it through more than one output format.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Section headings using underline and overline characters.
- Bullet lists, enumerated lists and definition lists.
- Field lists and option lists.
- Inline emphasis, strong emphasis and literal text.
- Hyperlinks and named reference targets.
- Directives for specialised document elements.
- Interpreted text roles.
- Grid tables and simple tables.
- Footnotes and citations.
- Images, figures and captions.
- Admonitions for notes, warnings and other notices.
- Substitution definitions for reusable inline content.
- Contents generation and document metadata.
- Literal code blocks with preserved whitespace.
- Extensible parsing through custom directives and roles.
- HTML, LaTeX, XML, OpenDocument and manual-page output through Docutils.
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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