manual.rst

How to use rst2pdf

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Introduction

This document explains how to use rst2pdf. Here is the very short version:

rst2pdf.py mydocument.txt -o mydocument.pdf

That will, as long as mydocument.txt is a valid reStructured Text (rST) document, produce a file called mydocument.pdf which is a PDF version of your document.

Of course, that means you just used default styles and settings. If it looks good enough for you, then you may stop reading this document, because you are done with it. If you are reading this in a PDF, it was generated using those default settings.

However, if you want to customize the output, or are just curious to see what can be done, let's continue.

Command line options

Configuration File

Since version 0.8, rst2pdf will read (if it is available) configuration files in /etc/rst2pdf.conf and ~/.rst2pdf/config.

The user's file at ~/.rst2pdf/config will have priority over the system's at /etc/rst2pdf.conf¹

Here's an example file showing some of the currently available options:

Pipe usage

If no input nor output are provided, stdin and stdout will be used respectively.

You may want to use rst2pdf in a linux pipe as such:

cat readme.txt | rst2pdf | gzip -c > readme.pdf.gz

or:

curl http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/user/rst/quickstart.txt | rst2pdf > quickstart.pdf

If no input argument is provided, stdin will be used:

cat readme.txt | rst2pdf -o readme.pdf

If output is set to dash (-), output goes to stdout:

rst2pdf -o - readme.txt > output.pdf

Headers and Footers

rST supports headers and footers, using the header and footer directive:

.. header::

   This will be at the top of every page.

Often, you may want to put a page number there, or a section name.The following magic tokens will be replaced (More may be added as rst2pdf evolves):

###Page###

Replaced by the current page number.

###Title###

Replaced by the document title

###Section###

Replaced by the current section title

###SectNum###

Replaced by the current section number. Important: You must use the sectnum directive for this to work.

###Total###

Replaced by the total number of pages in the document. Keep in mind that this is the real number of pages, not the displayed number, so if you play with page counters this number will probably be wrong.

Headers and footers are visible by default but they can be disabled by specific Page Templates for example, cover pages. You can also set headers and footers via command line options or the configuration file.

If you want to do things like "put the page number on the out side of the page, check The oddeven directive

Footnotes

Currently rst2pdf doesn't support real footnotes, and converts them to endnotes. There is a real complicated technical reason for this: I can't figure out a clean way to do it right.

You can get the same behaviour as with rst2html by specifying --inline-footnotes, and then the footnotes will appear where you put them (in other words, not footnotes, but "in-the-middle-of-text-notes" or just plain notes.)

Images

Inline

You can insert images in the middle of your text like this:

This |biohazard| means you have to run.

.. |biohazard| image:: assets/biohazard.png

This means you have to run.

Supported Image Types

For raster images, rst2pdf supports anything PIL (The Python Imaging Library) supports. The exact list of supported formats varies according to your PIL version and system.

For SVG support, you need to install svglib or use the inkscape extension.

Some features will not work when using these images. For example, gradients will not display, and text may cause problems depending on font availability.

You can also use PDF images, via pdfrw.

If you can choose between raster and vectorial images, for non-photographic images, vector files are usually smaller and look better, specially when printed.

Note

Image URLs

Attempting to be more compatible with rst2html, rst2pdf will try to handle images specified as HTTP or FTP URLs by downloading them to a temporary file and including them in the PDF.

This is probably not a good idea unless you are really sure the image won't go away.

Image Size

PDFs are meant to reflect paper. A PDF has a specific size in centimeters or inches.

Images usually are measured in pixels, which are meaningless in a PDF. To convert between pixels and inches or centimeters, we use a DPI (dots-per-inch) value.

For example, 300 pixels, with a 300DPI, are exactly one inch. 300 pixels at 100DPI are 3 inches.

For that reason, to achieve a nice layout of the page, it's usually a good idea to specify the size of your images in those units, or as a percentage of the available width and you can ignore all this DPI nonsense ;-)

The rst2pdf default is 300DPI, but you can change it using the --default-dpi option or the default_dpi setting in the config file.

Examples of images with specified sizes:

.. image:: home.png
   :width: 3in

.. image:: home.png
   :width: 80%

.. image:: home.png
   :width: 7cm

The valid units you can use are: em, ex, px, in, cm, mm, pt, pc, %, "".

• px: Pixels. If you specify the size using this unit, rst2pdf will convert it to inches using the default DPI explained above.
• No unit. If you just use a number, it will be considered as pixels. (IMPORTANT: this used to default to points. It was changed to be more compatible with rst2html)
• em: This is the same as your base style's font size. By default: 10 points.
• ex: rst2pdf will use the same broken definition as IE: em/2. In truth this should be the height of the lower-case x character in your base style.
• in: Inches (1 inch = 2.54 cm).
• cm: centimeters (1cm = 0.39 inches)
• mm: millimeters (10mm = 1cm)
• pt: 1/72 inch
• pc: 1/6 inch
• %: percentage of available width in the frame. Setting a percentage as a height does not work and probably never will.

If you don't specify a size at all, rst2pdf will do its best to figure out what it should do:

Since there is no specified size, rst2pdf will try to convert the image's pixel size to inches using the DPI information available in the image itself. You can set that value using most image editors. For example, using Gimp, it's in the Image -> Print Size menu.

So, if your image is 6000 pixels wide, and is set to 1200DPI, it will be 5 inches wide.

If your image doesn't have a DPI property set, and doesn't have it's desired size specified, rst2pdf will arbitrarily decide it should use 300DPI (or whatever you choose with the --default-dpi option).

Styles

You can style paragraphs with a style using the class directive:

.. class:: special

This paragraph is special.

This one is not.

Or inline styles using custom interpreted roles:

.. role:: redtext

I like color :redtext:`red`.

For more information about this, please check the rST docs.

The only special thing about using rst2pdf here is the syntax of the stylesheet.

You can make rst2pdf print the default stylesheet:

rst2pdf --print-stylesheet

If you want to add styles, just create a stylesheet, (or take the standard stylesheet and modify it) and pass it with the -s option:

rst2pdf mydoc.txt -s mystyles.txt

Those styles will always be searched in these places, in order:

• What you specify using --stylesheet_path
• The option stylesheet_path in the config file
• The current folder
• ~/.rst2pdf/styles
• The styles folder within rst2pdf's installation folder.

You can use multiple -s options, or pass more than one stylesheet separated with commas. They are processed in the order you give them so the last one has priority.

Included StyleSheets

To make some of the more common adjustments easier, rst2pdf includes a collection of stylesheets you can use:

Font styles

These stylesheets modify your font settings.

• serif uses the PDF serif font (Times) instead of the default Sans Serif (Arial)
• freetype-sans uses your system's default TrueType Sans Serif font
• freetype-serif uses your system's default TrueType Serif font
• twelvepoint makes the base font 12pt (default is 10pt)
• tenpoint makes the base font 10pt
• eightpoint makes the base font 8pt
• kerning switches to document to DejaVu Sans font and enables kerning.

Page layout styles

These stylesheets modify your page layout.

• twocolumn uses the twoColumn layout as the initial page layout.
• double-sided adds a gutter margin (margin at the "in side" of the pages)

Page size styles

Stylesheets that change the paper size.

The usual standard paper sizes are supported: A0, A1, A2, A3, A4 (default), A5, A6, B0, B1, B2, B3, B4, B5, B6, Letter, Legal, 11x17

The name of the stylesheet is lowercase.

Code block styles

See Syntax Highlighting

So, if you want to have a two-column, legal size, serif document with code in murphy style:

rst2pdf mydoc.txt -s twocolumn,serif,murphy,legal

StyleSheet Syntax

It's a JSON file with several elements in it.

Font Alias

This is the fontsAlias element. By default, it uses some of the standard PDF fonts:

"fontsAlias" : {
  "stdFont": "Helvetica",
  "stdBold": "Helvetica-Bold",
  "stdItalic": "Helvetica-Oblique",
  "stdBoldItalic": "Helvetica-BoldOblique",
  "stdMono": "Courier"
},

This defines the fonts used in the styles. You can use, for example, Helvetica directly in a style, but if later you want to use another font all through your document, you will have to change it in each style. So, I suggest you use aliases.

The standard PDF fonts are these:

• Times_Roman
• Times-Bold
• Times-Italic
• Times-Bold-Italic
• Helvetica
• Helvetica_Bold
• Helvetica-Oblique
• Helvetica-Bold-Oblique
• Courier
• Courier-Bold
• Courier-Oblique
• Courier-Bold-Oblique
• Symbol
• Zapf-Dingbats

Style Definition

Then you have a styles which is a list of [ stylename, styleproperties ]. For example:

["normal" , {
  "parent": "base"
}],

This means that the style called normal inherits style base. So, each property not defined in the normal style will be taken from the base style.

I suggest you do not remove any style from the default stylesheet. Add or modify at will, though.

If your document requires a style that is not defined in your stylesheet, it will print a warning and use bodytext instead.

Also, the order of the styles is important: if styleA is the parent of styleB, styleA should be earlier in the stylesheet.

These are all the possible attributes for a style and their default values. Some of them, like alignment, apply only when used to paragraphs, and not on inline styles:

"fontName":"Helvetica",
"fontSize":10,
"leading":12,
"leftIndent":0,
"rightIndent":0,
"firstLineIndent":0,
"alignment":"left",
"spaceBefore":0,
"spaceAfter":0,
"bulletFontName":"Helvetica",
"bulletFontSize":10,
"bulletText": "\u2022",
"bulletIndent":0,
"textColor": black,
"backColor":None,
"wordWrap":None,
"borderWidth": 0,
"borderPadding": 0,
"borderColor": None,
"borderRadius": None,
"allowWidows": 5,
"allowOrphans": 4

The following are the only attributes that work on styles when used for interpreted roles (inline styles):

• fontName
• fontSize
• textColor
• backColor

Widows and Orphans

Widow

A paragraph-ending line that falls at the beginning of the following page/column, thus separated from the remainder of the text.

Orphan

A paragraph-opening line that appears by itself at the bottom of a page/column.

rst2pdf has some widow/orphan control. Specifically, here's what's currently implemented:

On ordinary paragraphs, allowWidows and allowOrphans is passed to reportlab, which is supposed to do something about it if they are non-zero. In practice, it doesn't seem to have much effect.

The plan is to change the semantics of those settings, so that they mean the minimum number of lines that can be left alone at the beginning of a page (widows) or at the end (orphans).

Currently, these semantics only work for literal blocks and code blocks.

A literal block::

    This is a literal block.

A code block:

.. code-block:: python

    def x(y):
        print y**2

In future versions this may extend to ordinary paragraphs.

Font Embedding

There are thousands of excellent free True Type and Type 1 fonts available on the web, and you can use many of them in your documents by declaring them in your stylesheet.

The Easy Way

Just use the font name in your style. For example, you can define this:

["normal" , {
  "fontName" : "fonty"
}]

And then it may work.

What would need to happen for this to work?

Fonty is a True Type font:

1. You need to have it installed in your system, and have the fc-match utility available (it's part of fontconfig). You can test if it is so by running this command:

   $ fc-match fonty
   fonty.ttf: "Fonty" "Normal"

   If you are in Windows, I need your help ;-) or you can use The Harder Way (True Type)

2. The folder where fonty.ttf is located needs to be in your font path. You can set it using the --font-path option. For example:

   rst2pdf mydoc.txt -s mystyle.style --font-path /usr/share/fonts

   You don't need to put the exact folder, just something that is above it. In my own case, fonty is in /usr/share/fonts/TTF

Whenever a font is embedded, you can refer to it in a style by its name, and to its variants by the aliases Name-Oblique, Name-Bold, Name-BoldOblique.

Fonty is a Type 1 font:

You need it installed, and the folders where its font metric (.afm) and binary (.pfb) files are located need to be in your font fath.

For example, the "URW Palladio L" font that came with my installation of TeX consists of the following files:

/usr/share/texmf-dist/fonts/type1/urw/palatino/uplb8a.pfb
/usr/share/texmf-dist/fonts/type1/urw/palatino/uplbi8a.pfb
/usr/share/texmf-dist/fonts/type1/urw/palatino/uplr8a.pfb
/usr/share/texmf-dist/fonts/type1/urw/palatino/uplri8a.pfb
/usr/share/texmf-dist/fonts/afm/urw/palatino/uplb8a.afm
/usr/share/texmf-dist/fonts/afm/urw/palatino/uplbi8a.afm
/usr/share/texmf-dist/fonts/afm/urw/palatino/uplr8a.afm
/usr/share/texmf-dist/fonts/afm/urw/palatino/uplri8a.afm

So, I can use it if I put /usr/share/texmf-dist/fonts in my font path:

rst2pdf mydoc.txt -s mystyle.style --font-path /usr/share/texmf-dist/fonts

And putting this in my stylesheet, for example:

[ "title", { "fontName" : "URWPalladioL-Bold" } ]

There are some standard aliases defined so you can use other names:

'ITC Bookman'            : 'URW Bookman L',
'ITC Avant Garde Gothic' : 'URW Gothic L',
'Palatino'               : 'URW Palladio L',
'New Century Schoolbook' : 'Century Schoolbook L',
'ITC Zapf Chancery'      : 'URW Chancery L'

So, for example, you can use Palatino or New Century SchoolBook-Oblique And it will mean URWPalladioL or CenturySchL-Ital, respectively.

Whenever a font is embedded, you can refer to it in a style by its name, and to its variants by the aliases Name-Oblique, Name-Bold, Name-BoldOblique.

The Harder Way (True Type)

The stylesheet has an element is embeddedFonts that handles embedding True Type fonts in your PDF. Usually, it's empty, because with the default styles you are not using any font beyond the standard PDF fonts:

"embeddedFonts" : [ ],

You can put there the name of the font, and rst2pdf will try to embed it as described above. Example:

"embeddedFonts" : [ "Tuffy" ],

Or you can be explicit and tell rst2pdf the files that contain each variant of the font.

Suppose you want to use the nice public domain Tuffy font, then you need to give the filenames of all variants:

"embeddedFonts" : [ ["Tuffy.ttf","Tuffy_Bold.ttf","Tuffy_Italic.ttf","Tuffy_Bold_Italic.ttf"] ],

This will provide your styles with fonts called Tuffy, Tuffy_Bold and so on. They will be available with the names based on the filenames (Tuffy_Bold) and also by standard aliases similar to those of the standard PDF fonts (Tuffy-Bold, Tuffy-Oblique, Tuffy-BoldOblique, etc..)

Now, if you use italics in a paragraph whose style uses the Tuffy font, it will use Tuffy_Italic. That's why it's better if you use fonts that provide the four variants, and you should put them in that order. If your font lacks a variant, use the "normal" variant instead.

For example, if you only had Tuffy.ttf:

"embeddedFonts" : [ ["Tuffy.ttf","Tuffy.ttf","Tuffy.ttf","Tuffy.ttf"] ],

However, that means that italics and bold in styles using Tuffy will not work correctly (they will display as regular text).

If you want to use this as the base font for your document, you should change the fontsAlias section accordingly. For example:

"fontsAlias" : {
  "stdFont": "Tuffy",
  "stdBold": "Tuffy_Bold",
  "stdItalic": "Tuffy_Italic",
  "stdBoldItalic": "Tuffy_Bold_Italic",
  "stdMono": "Courier"
},

If, on the other hand, you only want a specific style to use the Tuffy font, don't change the fontAlias but rather set the fontName properties for that style. For example:

["heading1" , {
  "parent": "normal",
  "fontName": "Tuffy_Bold",
  "fontSize": 18,
  "keepWithNext": true,
  "spaceAfter": 6
}],

By default, rst2pdf will search for the fonts in its fonts folder and in the current folder. You can make it search another folder by passing the --font-folder option, or you can use absolute paths in your stylesheet.

The Harder Way (Type1)

To be written (and implemented and tested)

Page Size and Margins

In your stylesheet, the pageSetup element controls your page layout.

Here's the default stylesheet's element:

"pageSetup" : {
  "size": "A4",
  "width": null,
  "height": null,
  "margin-top": "2cm",
  "margin-bottom": "2cm",
  "margin-left": "2cm",
  "margin-right": "2cm",
  "spacing-header": "5mm",
  "spacing-footer": "5mm",
  "margin-gutter": "0cm"
},

Size is one of the standard paper sizes, like A4 or LETTER.

Here's a list: A0, A1, A2, A3, A4, A5, A6, B0, B1, B2, B3, B4, B5, B6, LETTER, LEGAL, ELEVENSEVENTEEN.

If you want a non-standard size, set size to null and use width and height.

When specifying width, height or margins, you need to use units, like inch (inches) or cm (centimeters).

When both width/height and size are specified, size will be used, and width/height ignored.

All margins should be self-explanatory, except for margin-gutter. That's the margin in the center of a two-page spread.

This value is added to the left margin of odd pages and the right margin of even pages, adding (or removing, if it's negative) space "in the middle" of opposing pages.

If you intend to bound a printed copy, you may need extra space there. OTOH, if you will display it on-screen on a two-page format (common in many PDF readers, nice for ebooks), a negative value may be pleasant.

Advanced: table styles

This is new in 0.12.

These are a few extra options in styles that are only used when the style is applied to a table. This happens in two cases:

1. You are using the class directive on a table:

.. class:: thick

+-------+---------+
|   A   |   B     |
+-----------------+

2. It's a style that automatically applies to something that is drawn using a table. Currently these include:
   • Footnotes / endnotes (endnote style)
   • Lists (item_list, bullet_list option_list and field_list styles)

The options are as follows:

Commands

For a full reference of these, please check the Reportlab User Guide specifically the TableStyle Commands section (section 7.4 in the manual for version 2.3)

Here, however, is a list of the possible commands:

BOX (or OUTLINE)
FONT
FONTNAME (or FACE)
FONTSIZE (or SIZE)
GRID
INNERGRID
LEADING
LINEBELOW
LINEABOVE
LINEBEFORE
LINEAFTER
TEXTCOLOR
ALIGNMENT (or ALIGN)
LEFTPADDING
RIGHTPADDING
BOTTOMPADDING
TOPPADDING
BACKGROUND
ROWBACKGROUNDS
COLBACKGROUNDS
VALIGN

Each takes as argument a couple of coordinates, where (0,0) is top-left, and (-1,-1) is bottom-right, and 0 or more extra arguments.

For example, INNERGRID takes a line width and a color:

[ "INNERGRID", [ 0, 0 ], [ -1, -1 ], 0.25, "black" ],

That would mean "draw all lines inside the table with .25pt black"

colWidths

A list of the column widths you want, in the unit you prefer (default unit is pt).

Example:

"colWidths": ["3cm",null]

If your colWidths has fewer values than columns in your table, the rest are auto-calculated. A column width of null means "guess".

If you don't specify column widths, the table will try to look proportional to the restructured text source.

Multiple Stylesheets

When you use a custom stylesheet, you don't need to define everything in it. Whatever you don't define will be taken from the default stylesheet. For example, if you only want to change page size, default font and font size, this would be enough:

{
    "pageSetup" : {
        "size": "A5",
    },
    "fontsAlias" : {
        "stdFont": "Times-Roman",
    },
    "styles" : [
        ["normal" , {
        "fontSize": 14
        }]
    ]
}

Note

The command option used for table styles is not kept across stylesheets. For example, the default stylesheet defines endnote with this command list:

"commands": [ [ "VALIGN", [ 0, 0 ], [ -1, -1 ], "TOP" ] ]

If you redefine endnote in another stylesheet and use this to create a vertical line between the endnote's columns:

"commands": [ [ "LINEAFTER", [ 0, 0 ], [ 1, -1 ], .25, "black" ] ]

Then the footnotes will not have VALIGN TOP!

To do that, you MUST use all commands in your stylesheet:

"commands": [
    [ "VALIGN", [ 0, 0 ], [ -1, -1 ], "TOP" ],
    [ "LINEAFTER", [ 0, 0 ], [ 1, -1 ], .25, "black" ]
]

Styling Your Document

Which styles you need to modify to achieve your desired result is not obvious. In this section, you will see some hints and pointers to that effect.

The Base Styles

There are three styles which have great effect, they are base, normal and bodytext.

Here's an example, the twelvepoint stylesheet:

{"styles": [["base", {"fontSize": 12}]]}

Since all other styles inherit base, changing the fontSize changes the fontSize for everything in your document.

The normal style is meant for most elements, so usually it's the same as changing base.

The bodytext style is for elements that form paragraphs. So, for example, you can set your document to be left-aligned like this:

{"styles": [["bodytext", {"alignment": "left"}]]}

There are elements, however, that don't inherit from bodytext, for example headings and the styles used in the table of contents. Those are elements that are not real paragraphs, so they should not follow the indentation and spacing you use for your document's main content.

The heading style is inherited by all sorts of titles: section titles, topic titles, admonition titles, etc.

Lists

Styling lists is mostly a matter of spacing and indentation.

The space before and after a list is taken from the item_list and bullet_list styles:

["item_list", {
  "parent": "bodytext",
  "spaceBefore": 0,
  "commands": [
        [ "VALIGN", [ 0, 0 ], [ -1, -1 ], "TOP" ],
        [ "RIGHTPADDING", [ 0, 0 ], [ 1, -1 ], 0 ]
    ],
    "colWidths": ["20pt",null]
}]

["bullet_list", {
  "parent": "bodytext",
  "spaceBefore": 0,
  "commands": [
        [ "VALIGN", [ 0, 0 ], [ -1, -1 ], "TOP" ],
        [ "RIGHTPADDING", [ 0, 0 ], [ 1, -1 ], 0 ]
    ],
    "colWidths": ["20",null]
}],

Yes, these are table styles, because they are implemented as tables. The RIGHTPADDING command and the colWidths option can be used to adjust the position of the bullet/item number.

To control the separation between items, you use the item_list_item and bullet_list_item styles' spaceBefore and spaceAfter options. For example:

["bullet_list_item" , {
  "parent": "bodytext",
  "spaceBefore": 20
}]

Remember that this is only used between items and not before the first or after the last items.

Syntax Highlighting

rst2pdf adds a non-standard directive, called code-block, which produces syntax highlighted for many languages using Pygments.

For example, if you want to include a Python fragment:

.. code-block:: python

    def myFun(x,y):
        print x+y

def myFun(x,y):
    print x+y

Notice that you need to declare the language of the fragment. Here's a list of the currently supported.

You can use the linenos option to display line numbers:

def myFun(x,y):
    print x+y

You can use the hl_lines option to emphasize certain lines by dimming the other lines. This parameter takes a space separated list of line numbers. The other lines are then styled with the class pygments_diml that defaults to gray. For example, to highlight print "line a" and print "line b":

def myFun(x,y):
    print "line a"
    print "line b"
    print "line c"

rst2pdf includes several stylesheets for highlighting code:

• autumn
• borland
• bw
• colorful
• emacs
• friendly
• fruity
• manni
• murphy
• native
• pastie
• perldoc
• trac
• vs

You can use any of them instead of the default by adding, for example, a -s murphy to the command line.

If you already are using a custom stylesheet, use both:

rst2pdf mydoc.rst -o mydoc.pdf -s mystyle.json,murphy

The default is the same as emacs.

There is an online demo of pygments showing these styles:

http://pygments.org/demo/1817/

The overall look of a code box is controlled by the "code" style or by a class you apply to it using the .. class:: directive. Additionally, if you want to change some properties when using different languages, you can define styles with the name of the language. For example, a python style will be applied to code blocks created with .. code-block:: python.

The look of the line numbers is controlled by the linenumbers style.

As rst2pdf is written in Python, let's see some examples and variations around Python.

Python in console

>>> my_string="python is great"
>>> my_string.find('great')
10
>>> my_string.startswith('py')
True

Python traceback

Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "error.py", line 9, in ?
    main()
    File "error.py", line 6, in main
    print call_error()
    File "error.py", line 2, in call_error
    r = 1/0
ZeroDivisionError: integer division or modulo by zero
Exit 1

The code-block directive supports many options, that mirror Pygments':

FIXME: fix this to really explain them all. This is a placeholder.

                            'stripnl' : string_bool,
                            'stripall': string_bool,
                            'ensurenl': string_bool,
                            'tabsize' : directives.positive_int,
                            'encoding': directives.encoding,
                            # Lua
                            'func_name_hightlighting':string_bool,
                            'disabled_modules': string_list,
                            # Python Console
                            'python3': string_bool,
                            # Delphi
                            'turbopascal':string_bool,
                            'delphi' :string_bool,
                            'freepascal': string_bool,
                            'units': string_list,
                            # Modula2
                            'pim'   : string_bool,
                            'iso'   : string_bool,
                            'objm2' : string_bool,
                            'gm2ext': string_bool,
                            # CSharp
                            'unicodelevel' : csharp_unicodelevel,
                            # Literate haskell
                            'litstyle' : lhs_litstyle,
                            # Raw
                            'compress': raw_compress,
                            # Rst
                            'handlecodeblocks': string_bool,
                            # Php
                            'startinline': string_bool,
                            'funcnamehighlighting': string_bool,
                            'disabledmodules': string_list,

You can find more information about them in the pygments manual.

File inclusion

You can use the code-block directive with an external file, using the :include: option:

.. code-block:: python
   :include: setup.py

This will give a warning if setup.py doesn't exist or can't be opened.

Include with Boundaries

You can add selectors to limit the inclusion to a portion of the file. The options are:

:start-at: string

will include file beginning at the first occurrence of string, string included

:start-after: string

will include file beginning at the first occurrence of string, string excluded

:end-before: string

will include file up to the first occurrence of string, string excluded

:end-at: string

will include file up to the first occurrence of string, string included

Let's display a class from rst2pdf:

.. code-block:: python
   :include: assets/flowables.py
   :start-at: class Separation(Flowable):
   :end-before: class Reference(Flowable):

This command gives

Options

linenos

Display line numbers along the code

linenos_offset

If you include a file and are skipping the beginning, using the linenos_offset makes the line count start from the real line number, instead of 1.

Raw Directive

Raw PDF

rst2pdf has a very limited mechanism to pass commands to reportlab, the PDF generation library. You can use the raw directive to insert pagebreaks and spacers (other reportlab flowables may be added if there's interest), and set page transitions.

The syntax is shell-like, here's an example:

One page

.. raw:: pdf

    PageBreak

Another page. Now some space:

.. raw:: pdf

    Spacer 0,200
    Spacer 0 200

And another paragraph.

The unit used by the spacer by default is points, and using a space or a comma is the same thing in all cases.

Page Counters

In some documents, you may not want your page counter to start in the first page.

For example, if the first pages are a coverpage and a table of contents, you want page 1 to be where your first section starts.

To do that, you have to use the SetPageCounter command.

Here is a syntax example:

.. raw:: pdf

    SetPageCounter 0 lowerroman

This sets the counter to 0, and makes it display in lower roman characters (i, ii, iii, etc) which is a style often used for the pages before the document proper (for example, TOCs and abstracts).

It can take zero or two arguments.

SetPageCounter

When used with no arguments, it sets the counter to 0, and the style to arabic numerals.

SetPageCounter number style

When used with two arguments, the first argument must be a number, it sets the page counter to that number.

The second number is a style of counter. Valid values are:

• lowerroman: i, ii, iii, iv, v ...
• roman: I, II, III, IV, V ...
• arabic: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ...
• loweralpha: a, b, c, d, e ... [Don't use for numbers above 26]
• alpha: A, B, C, D, E ... [Don't use for numbers above 26]

Note

Page counter changes take effect on the current page.

Page Breaks

There are three kinds of page breaks:

PageBreak

Break to the next page

EvenPageBreak

Break to the next even numbered page

OddPageBreak

Break to the next odd numbered page

Each of them can take an additional number which is the name of the next page template. For example:

PageBreak twoColumn

Frame Breaks

If you want to jump to the next frame in the page (or the next page if the current frame is the last), you can use the FrameBreak command. It takes an optional height in points, and then it only breaks the frame if there is less than that vertical space available.

For example, if you don't want a paragraph to begin if it's less than 50 points from the bottom of the frame:

.. raw:: pdf

   FrameBreak 50

This paragraph is so important that I don't want it at the very bottom of
the page...

Page Transitions

Page transitions are effects used when you change pages in Presentation or Full Screen mode (depends on the viewer). You can use it when creating a presentation using PDF files.

The syntax is this:

.. raw:: pdf

   Transition effect duration [optional arguments]

The optional arguments are:

direction

Can be 0,90,180 or 270 (top,right,bottom,left)

dimension

Can be H or V

motion

Can be I or O (Inside or Outside)

The effects with their arguments are:

• Split duration direction motion
• Blinds duration dimension
• Box duration motion
• Wipe duration direction
• Dissolve duration
• Glitter duration direction

For example:

.. raw:: pdf

   Transition Glitter 3 90

Uses the Glitter effect, for 3 seconds, at direction 90 degrees (from the right?)

Keep in mind that Transition sets the transition from this page to the next so the natural thing is to use it before a PageBreak:

.. raw:: pdf

   Transition Dissolve 1
   PageBreak

Text Annotations

Text annotations are meta notes added to a page.

The syntax is this:

.. raw:: pdf

   TextAnnotation "text to add" [optional position]

The optional position is a set of 4 numbers for x_begin, y_begin`,x_endandy_endRaw HTML ~~~~~~~~ If you have a document that contains raw HTML, and havexhtml2pdfinstalled,rst2pdfwill try to render that HTML inside your document. To enable this, use the--raw-htmlcommand line option. The counter role ---------------- .. note:: The counter role only works in PDF, if you're reading the HTML version of the manual then this section is broken. Sorry :/ This is a nonstandard interpreted text role, which means it will only work withrst2pdf. It implements an unlimited number of counters you can use in your text. For example, you could use it to have numbered figures, or numbered tables. The syntax is this: .. code-block:: rst Start a counter called seq1 that starts from 1: :counter:`seq1` Now this should print 2: :counter:`seq1` You can start counters from any number (this prints 12): :counter:`seq2:12` And have any number of counters with any name: :counter:`figures` So#seq1-2should link to `the number 2 above <#seq1-2>`_ The output is: Start a counter called seq1 that starts from 1: :counter:`seq1` Now this should print 2: :counter:`seq1` You can start counters from any number (this prints 12): :counter:`seq2:12` And have any number of counters with any name: :counter:`figures` Also, the counters create targets for links with this scheme:#countername-number. So#seq1-2should link to `the number 2 above <#seq1-2>`_ The oddeven directive --------------------- This is a nonstandard directive, which means it will only work with rst2pdf, and not with rst2html or any other docutils tool. The contents of oddeven should consist of **exactly** two things (in this case, two paragraphs). The first will be used on odd pages, and the second one on even pages. If you want to use more complex content, you should wrap it with containers, like in this example: .. code-block:: rst .. oddeven:: .. container:: This will appear on odd pages. Both paragraphs in the container are for odd pages. This will appear on even pages. It's a single paragraph, so no need for containers. This directive has several limitations. * I intentionally have disabled splitting into pages for this, because I have no idea how that could make sense. That means that if its content is larger than a frame, you **will** make rst2pdf barf with one of those ugly errors. * It will reserve the space of the larger of the two sets of contents. So if one is small and the other large, it **will** look wrong. I may be able to fix this though. * If you try to generate HTML (or anything other than a PDF via rst2pdf) from a file containing this, it will not do what you want. Mathematics ----------- If you have Matplotlib_ installed, rst2pdf supports a math role and a math directive. You can use them to insert formulae and mathematical notation in your documents using a subset of LaTeX syntax, but doesn't require you have LaTeX installed. For example, here's how you use the math directive:: .. math:: \frac{2 \pm \sqrt{7}}{3} And here's the result: .. math:: \frac{2 \pm \sqrt{7}}{3} If you want to insert mathematical notation in your text like this: :math:`\pi` that is the job of the math *role*:: This is :math:`\pi` Produces: This is :math:`\pi` Currently, the math role is slightly buggy, and in some cases will produce misaligned and generally broken output. Also, while the math directive embeds fonts and draws your formula as text, the math role embeds an image. That means: * You can't copy the text of inline math * Inline math will look worse when printed, or make your file larger. So, use it only in emergencies ;-) You don't need to worry about fonts, the correct math fonts will be used and embedded in your PDF automatically (they are included withmatplotlib). .. _matplotlib: http://matplotlib.sf.net For an introduction to LaTeX syntax, see the "Typesetting Mathematical Formulae" chapter in "The Not So Short Introduction to LaTeX 2e": http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/info/lshort/english/lshort.pdf Basically, the inline form$a^2$is similar to the math role, and the display form is similar to the math directive. rst2pdf doesn't support numbering equations yet. The math directive supports the following options::fontsize:Sets the font size used in the math directive. By default it will use the paragraph's font and size.:color:Can change the color of the math directive's output. Can take either a color by name likeredor a hex code like#4c050fHyphenation ----------- If you want good looking documents, you want to enable hyphenation. To do it, you need to install Wordaxe [#]_. .. [#] Use Roberto Alsina's fork of Wordaxe from https://github.com/ralsina/wordaxe as this works with later versions of ReportLab. If after installing it you get the letter "s" or a black square instead of a hyphen, that means you need to replace the rl_codecs.py file from reportlab with the one from wordaxe. For more information, see `this issue`_ in rst2pdf's bug tracker. .. _this issue: http://code.google.com/p/rst2pdf/issues/detail?id=5 Also, you may need to set hyphenation to true in one or more styles, and the language for hyphenation via the command line or paragraph styles. For English, this should be enough:: ["bodytext" , { "alignment": "justify", "hyphenation": true }], If you are not an English speaker, you need to change the language using the-lor--languageoption. Since Wordaxe version 0.2.6, it can use the PyHyphen library if it's available. PyHyphen can use any OpenOffice dictionary, and can even download them automatically. [#]_ .. [#] For more information, please check the PyHyphen website at http://pyhyphen.googlecode.com For example, this will enable German hyphenation globally:: rst2pdf -l de_DE mydocument.txt If you are creating a multilingual document, you can declare styles with specific languages. For example, you could inheritbodytextfor Spanish:: ["bodytext_es" , { "parent": "bodytext", "alignment": "justify", "hyphenation": true, "language": "es_ES" }], And all paragraphs declared ofbodytext_esstyle would have Spanish hyphenation:: .. class:: bodytext_es Debo a la conjunción de un espejo y de una enciclopedia el descubrimiento de Uqbar. El espejo inquietaba el fondo de un corredor en una quinta de la calle Gaona, en Ramos Mejía; la enciclopedia falazmente se llama *The Anglo-American Cyclopaedía* (New York, 1917) y es una reimpresión literal, pero también morosa, de la *Encyclopaedia Britannica* de 1902. Here is the result (made thinner to force hyphenation): .. class:: thin Debo a la conjunción de un espejo y de una enciclopedia el descubrimiento de Uqbar. El espejo inquietaba el fondo de un corredor en una quinta de la calle Gaona, en Ramos Mejía; la enciclopedia falazmente se llama *The Anglo-American Cyclopaedía* (New York, 1917) y es una reimpresión literal, pero también morosa, de la *Encyclopaedia Britannica* de 1902. BTW: That's the beginning of "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius", read it, it's cool. If you explicitly configure a language in a paragraph style and also pass a language in the command line, the style has priority, so remember: .. important:: If you configure the bodytext style to have a language, your document is supposed to be in that language, regardless of what the command line says. If this is too confusing, let me know, I will try to figure out a simpler way. Page Layout ----------- By default, your document will have a single column of text covering the space between the margins. You can change that, though, in fact you can do so even in the middle of your document! .. _page templates: To do it, you need to define *Page Templates* in your stylesheet. The default stylesheet already has three of them:: "pageTemplates" : { "coverPage": { "frames": [ ["0cm", "0cm", "100%", "100%"] ], "showHeader" : false, "showFooter" : false }, "oneColumn": { "frames": [ ["0cm", "0cm", "100%", "100%"] ] }, "twoColumn": { "frames": [ ["0cm", "0cm", "49%", "100%"], ["51%", "0cm", "49%", "100%"] ] } } A page template has a name (oneColumn,twoColumn), some options, and a list of frames. A frame is a list containing this:: [ left position, bottom position, width, height, left padding, bottom padding, right padding, top padding] All the padding values are optional and default to 6 points. For example, this defines a frame "at the very left", "at the very bottom", "a bit less than half a page wide" and "as tall as possible":: ["0cm", "0cm", "49%", "100%"] And this means "the top third of the page":: ["0cm", "66.66%", "100%", "33.34%"] You can use all the usual units,cm,mm,inch, and%, which means "percentage of the page (excluding margins and headers or footers)". Using%is probably the smartest for columns and gives you a fluid layout, while the other units are better for more "fixed" elements. Since we can have more than one template, there is a way to specify which one we want to use, and a way to change from one to another. To specify the first template, do it in your stylesheet, inpageSetup(oneColumnis the default):: "pageSetup" : { "firstTemplate": "oneColumn" } Then, to change to another template, in your document use this syntax (will change soon, though): .. code-block:: rst .. raw:: pdf PageBreak twoColumn That will trigger a page break, and the new page will use the twoColumn template. You can see an example of this in the *Montecristo* folder in the source package. The supported page template options and their defaults are: *showHeader: True *defaultHeader: None Has the same effect as the header directive in the document. *showFooter: True *defaultFooter: None Has the same effect as the footer directive in the document. *background: None The background should be an image, which will be centered in your page or stretched to match your page size, depending on the--fit-background-modeoption, so use with caution. .. _fontconfig: http://www.freedesktop.org/fontconfig/ Smart Quotes ------------ Quoted from the smartypants_ documentation: This feature can perform the following transformations: Straight quotes ("and') into "curly" quote HTML entities Backticks-style quotes (\`\`like this'') into "curly" quote HTML entities Dashes (--and---) into en- and em-dash entities Three consecutive dots (...or. . .) into an ellipsis entity This means you can write, edit, and save your posts using plain old ASCII straight quotes, plain dashes, and plain dots, but your published posts (and final PDF output) will appear with smart quotes, em-dashes, and proper ellipses. You can enable this by passing the--smart-quotesoption in the command line. By default, it's disabled. Here are the different values you can use (again, from the smartypants docs): 0 Suppress all transformations. (Do nothing.) 1 Performs these transformations: quotes (including \`\`backticks'' -style), em-dashes, and ellipses. "--" (dash dash) is used to signify an em-dash; there is no support for en-dashes. 2 Same as smarty_pants="1", except that it uses the old-school typewriter shorthand for dashes: "--" (dash dash) for en-dashes, "---" (dash dash dash) for em-dashes. 3 Same as smarty_pants="2", but inverts the shorthand for dashes: "--" (dash dash) for em-dashes, and "---" (dash dash dash) for en-dashes. Currently, even if you enable it, this transformation will only take place in regular paragraphs, titles, headers, footers and block quotes. .. _smartypants: http://web.chad.org/projects/smartypants.py/ Kerning ------- Kerning is the process of adjusting letter spacing. It is usually accepted that kerning makes your text look better. For example, if you are using proper kerning, the As and Ws in AWAWA will overlap slightly. If you want kerning in your PDFs, you need to do the following: * Use wordaxe at least 1.0.0 * Use a TrueType font * Set kerning to true in your style. For example, if you want **all** text to be kerned, you can set it in the "base" style. For convenience, a stylesheet that uses DejaVu fonts with kerning is provided askerning.json, so you can copy and adapt to your needs, or just use it with the-soption. Sphinx ------ Sphinx_ is a very popular tool. This is the description from its website: Sphinx is a tool that makes it easy to create intelligent and beautiful documentation, written by Georg Brandl and licensed under the BSD license. It was originally created to translate the new Python documentation, and it has excellent support for the documentation of Python projects, but other documents can be written with it too. rst2pdf includes an experimental PDF extension for Sphinx. To use it in your existing Sphinx project you need to do the following: 1. Addrst2pdf.pdfbuildertoextensionsin yourconf.py. For example:: extensions = ['sphinx.ext.autodoc','rst2pdf.pdfbuilder'] 2. Add the PDF options at the end ofconf.py, adapted to your project:: # -- Options for PDF output -------------------------------------------------- # Grouping the document tree into PDF files. List of tuples # (source start file, target name, title, author, options). # # If there is more than one author, separate them with \\. # For example: r'Guido van Rossum\\Fred L. Drake, Jr., editor' # # The options element is a dictionary that lets you override # this config per-document. For example: # # ('index', 'MyProject', 'My Project', 'Author Name', {'pdf_compressed': True}) # # would mean that specific document would be compressed # regardless of the global 'pdf_compressed' setting. pdf_documents = [ ('index', 'MyProject', 'My Project', 'Author Name'), ] # A comma-separated list of custom stylesheets. Example: pdf_stylesheets = ['sphinx', 'kerning', 'a4'] # A list of folders to search for stylesheets. Example: pdf_style_path = ['.', '_styles'] # Create a compressed PDF # Use True/False or 1/0 # Example: compressed=True # pdf_compressed = False # A colon-separated list of folders to search for fonts. Example: # pdf_font_path = ['/usr/share/fonts', '/usr/share/texmf-dist/fonts/'] # Language to be used for hyphenation support # pdf_language = "en_US" # Mode for literal blocks wider than the frame. Can be # overflow, shrink or truncate # pdf_fit_mode = "shrink" # Section level that forces a break page. # For example: 1 means top-level sections start in a new page # 0 means disabled # pdf_break_level = 0 # When a section starts in a new page, force it to be 'even', 'odd', # or just use 'any' # pdf_breakside = 'any' # Insert footnotes where they are defined instead of # at the end. # pdf_inline_footnotes = True # verbosity level. 0 1 or 2 # pdf_verbosity = 0 # If false, no index is generated. # pdf_use_index = True # If false, no modindex is generated. # pdf_use_modindex = True # If false, no coverpage is generated. # pdf_use_coverpage = True # Name of the cover page template to use # pdf_cover_template = 'sphinxcover.tmpl' # Documents to append as an appendix to all manuals. # pdf_appendices = [] # Enable experimental feature to split table cells. Use it # if you get "DelayedTable too big" errors # pdf_splittables = False # Set the default DPI for images # pdf_default_dpi = 72 # Enable rst2pdf extension modules (default is only vectorpdf) # you need vectorpdf if you want to use sphinx's graphviz support # pdf_extensions = ['vectorpdf'] # Page template name for "regular" pages # pdf_page_template = 'cutePage' # Show Table Of Contents at the beginning? # pdf_use_toc = True # How many levels deep should the table of contents be? pdf_toc_depth = 9999 # Add section number to section references pdf_use_numbered_links = False # Background images fitting mode pdf_fit_background_mode = 'scale' # Repeat table header on tables that cross a page boundary? pdf_repeat_table_rows = True 3. (Optional) Modify yourMakefileormake.batfile ForMakefile(on \*nix systems) .. code-block:: makefile pdf: $(SPHINXBUILD) -b pdf $(ALLSPHINXOPTS) _build/pdf @echo @echo "Build finished. The PDF files are in _build/pdf." Formake.bat(on Windows): .. code-block:: bat if "%1" == "pdf" ( %SPHINXBUILD% -b pdf %ALLSPHINXOPTS% %BUILDDIR%/pdf echo. echo.Build finished. The PDF files are in %BUILDDIR%/pdf goto end ) Then you can runmake pdforsphinx-build -b pdf ...similar to how you did it before. .. _sphinx: http://sphinx.pocoo.org Extensions ---------- rst2pdf can get new features from *extensions*. Extensions are python modules that can be enabled with the-eoption. Several are included with rst2pdf. Preprocess (-e preprocess) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ .. include:: ../rst2pdf/extensions/preprocess_r2p.py :start-after: ''' :end-before: ''' Inkscape (-e inkscape) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ .. include:: ../rst2pdf/extensions/inkscape_r2p.py :start-after: """ :end-before: """ Dotted_TOC (-e dotted_toc``)

Developers

Licenses

This is the license for rst2pdf:

Copyright (c) 2007-2020 Roberto Alsina and the contributors to the rst2pdf project

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in
all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN
THE SOFTWARE.

Some fragments of rstpdf are copied from ReportLab under the following license:

Copyright (c) 2000-2008, ReportLab Inc.
All rights reserved.

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification,
are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

* Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice,
  this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
* Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice,
  this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation
  and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
* Neither the name of the company nor the names of its contributors may be
  used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without
  specific prior written permission.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND
ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED.
IN NO EVENT SHALL THE OFFICERS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT,
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TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS;
OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER
IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING
IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF
SUCH DAMAGE.

---

1. The /etc/rst2pdf.conf location makes sense for Linux and linux-like systems. if you are using rst2pdf in other systems, please contact me and tell me where the system-wide config file should be.↩