Are there any real alternatives to reStructuredText for Python documentation?
I'm starting an open source Python project shortly and I'm trying to decide in advance how to write my docstrings. The obvious answer would be using reStructuredText and Sphinx with autodoc, because I really like the idea of simply properly documenting my code in my docstrings then have Sphinx automatically construct an API doc for me.
The problem is the reStructuredText syntax it uses - I think it's completely unreadable before it's rendered. For instance:
:param path: The path of the file to wrap
:type path: str
:param field_storage: The :class:`FileStorage` instance to wrap
:type field_storage: FileStorage
:param temporary: Whether or not to delete the file when the File instance
is destructed
:type temporary: bool
You have to really slow down and take a minute to make any sense out of that syntactic jumble. I like much more the Google way (Google Python Style Guide), which counterpart to the above looks like this:
Args:
path (str): The path of the file to wrap
field_storage (FileStorage): The FileStorage instance to wrap
temporary (bool): Whether or not to delete the file when the File
instance is destructed
Way nicer! But of course, Sphinx will have none of that and renders all the text after Args: in one long line.
So to summarize - before I go and defile my code base with this reStructuredText syntax I would like to know if there are any real alternatives to using it and Sphinx, short of just writing my own API doc. For instance, is there an extension for Sphinx that handles Google Style Guide's docstring style?
Answer
I have created a Sphinx extension that parses both Google style and NumPy style docstrings, and converts them to standard reStructuredText.
To use it, simply install it:
$ pip install sphinxcontrib-napoleon
And enable it in conf.py:
# conf.py
# Add autodoc and napoleon to the extensions list
extensions = ['sphinx.ext.autodoc', 'sphinxcontrib.napoleon']
More documentation on napoleon here.