Paragraph-level markup

These directives create short paragraphs and can be used inside information units as well as normal text:

.. note::

An especially important bit of information about an API that a user should be aware of when using whatever bit of API the note pertains to. The content of the directive should be written in complete sentences and include all appropriate punctuation.

Example:

.. note::

   This function is not suitable for sending spam e-mails.
.. warning::

An important bit of information about an API that a user should be very aware of when using whatever bit of API the warning pertains to. The content of the directive should be written in complete sentences and include all appropriate punctuation. This differs from note in that it is recommended over note for information regarding security.

.. versionadded:: version

This directive documents the version of the project which added the described feature to the library or C API. When this applies to an entire module, it should be placed at the top of the module section before any prose.

The first argument must be given and is the version in question; you can add a second argument consisting of a brief explanation of the change.

Example:

.. versionadded:: 2.5
   The *spam* parameter.

Note that there must be no blank line between the directive head and the explanation; this is to make these blocks visually continuous in the markup.

.. versionchanged:: version

Similar to versionadded, but describes when and what changed in the named feature in some way (new parameters, changed side effects, etc.).

.. deprecated:: version

Similar to versionchanged, but describes when the feature was deprecated. An explanation can also be given, for example to inform the reader what should be used instead. Example:

.. deprecated:: 3.1
   Use :func:`spam` instead.
.. seealso::

Many sections include a list of references to module documentation or external documents. These lists are created using the seealso directive.

The seealso directive is typically placed in a section just before any sub-sections. For the HTML output, it is shown boxed off from the main flow of the text.

The content of the seealso directive should be a reST definition list. Example:

.. seealso::

   Module :py:mod:`zipfile`
      Documentation of the :py:mod:`zipfile` standard module.

   `GNU tar manual, Basic Tar Format <http://link>`_
      Documentation for tar archive files, including GNU tar extensions.

There’s also a “short form” allowed that looks like this:

.. seealso:: modules :py:mod:`zipfile`, :py:mod:`tarfile`

New in version 0.5: The short form.

.. rubric:: title

This directive creates a paragraph heading that is not used to create a table of contents node.

Note

If the title of the rubric is “Footnotes” (or the selected language’s equivalent), this rubric is ignored by the LaTeX writer, since it is assumed to only contain footnote definitions and therefore would create an empty heading.

.. centered::

This directive creates a centered boldfaced line of text. Use it as follows:

.. centered:: LICENSE AGREEMENT

Deprecated since version 1.1: This presentation-only directive is a legacy from older versions. Use a rst-class directive instead and add an appropriate style.

.. hlist::

This directive must contain a bullet list. It will transform it into a more compact list by either distributing more than one item horizontally, or reducing spacing between items, depending on the builder.

For builders that support the horizontal distribution, there is a columns option that specifies the number of columns; it defaults to 2. Example:

.. hlist::
   :columns: 3

   * A list of
   * short items
   * that should be
   * displayed
   * horizontally

New in version 0.6.

Table-of-contents markup

The toctree directive, which generates tables of contents of subdocuments, is described in The TOC tree.

For local tables of contents, use the standard reST contents directive.

Glossary

.. glossary::

This directive must contain a reST definition-list-like markup with terms and definitions. The definitions will then be referencable with the term role. Example:

.. glossary::

   environment
      A structure where information about all documents under the root is
      saved, and used for cross-referencing.  The environment is pickled
      after the parsing stage, so that successive runs only need to read
      and parse new and changed documents.

   source directory
      The directory which, including its subdirectories, contains all
      source files for one Sphinx project.

In contrast to regular definition lists, multiple terms per entry are allowed, and inline markup is allowed in terms. You can link to all of the terms. For example:

.. glossary::

   term 1
   term 2
      Definition of both terms.

(When the glossary is sorted, the first term determines the sort order.)

New in version 0.6: You can now give the glossary directive a :sorted: flag that will automatically sort the entries alphabetically.

Changed in version 1.1: Now supports multiple terms and inline markup in terms.

Grammar production displays

Special markup is available for displaying the productions of a formal grammar. The markup is simple and does not attempt to model all aspects of BNF (or any derived forms), but provides enough to allow context-free grammars to be displayed in a way that causes uses of a symbol to be rendered as hyperlinks to the definition of the symbol. There is this directive:

.. productionlist:: [name]

This directive is used to enclose a group of productions. Each production is given on a single line and consists of a name, separated by a colon from the following definition. If the definition spans multiple lines, each continuation line must begin with a colon placed at the same column as in the first line.

The argument to productionlist serves to distinguish different sets of production lists that belong to different grammars.

Blank lines are not allowed within productionlist directive arguments.

The definition can contain token names which are marked as interpreted text (e.g. sum ::= `integer` "+" `integer`) – this generates cross-references to the productions of these tokens. Outside of the production list, you can reference to token productions using token.

Note that no further reST parsing is done in the production, so that you don’t have to escape * or | characters.

The following is an example taken from the Python Reference Manual:

.. productionlist::
   try_stmt: try1_stmt | try2_stmt
   try1_stmt: "try" ":" `suite`
            : ("except" [`expression` ["," `target`]] ":" `suite`)+
            : ["else" ":" `suite`]
            : ["finally" ":" `suite`]
   try2_stmt: "try" ":" `suite`
            : "finally" ":" `suite`