I am a great fan of reStructuredText, however the tools that support it are scattered all over the Internet. The official tool list is incomplete and/or outdated, and can be updated only via commit privileges. For some time there was a comprehensive list at the Wikipedia reStructuredText page, but this apparently "did not meet the notability guideline for web content" and was removed.
So to put it in a question form: What tool support can one expect to find when working with reStructuredText, e.g. text editors, Wiki software, converters to and from reStructuredText etc.?
Salvaging (and extending) the list from an old version of the Wikipedia page:
Although the reference implementation of reStructuredText is written in Python, there are reStructuredText parsers in other languages too.
The main distribution of reStructuredText is the Python Docutils package. It contains several conversion tools:
Pandoc is a Haskell library for converting from one markup format to another, and a command-line tool that uses this library. It can read Markdown and (subsets of) reStructuredText, HTML, and LaTeX, and it can write Markdown, reStructuredText, HTML, LaTeX, ConTeXt, PDF, RTF, DocBook XML, OpenDocument XML, ODT, GNU Texinfo, MediaWiki markup, groff man pages, and S5 HTML slide shows.
There is an Pandoc online tool (POT) to try this library. Unfortunately, compared to the reStructuredText online renderer (ROR),
docutils
)JRst is a Java reStructuredText parser. It can currently output HTML, XHTML, DocBook xdoc and PDF, BUT seems to have serious problems: neither PDF or (X)HTML generation works using the current full download, result pages in (X)HTML are empty and PDF generation fails on IO problems with XSL files (not bundled??). Note that the original JRst has been removed from the website; a fork is found on GitHub.
Laika is a new library for transforming markup languages to other output formats. Currently it supports input from Markdown and reStructuredText and produce HTML output. The library is written in Scala but should be also usable from Java.
The Nim compiler features the commands rst2html
and rst2tex
which transform reStructuredText files to HTML and TeX files. The standard library provides the following modules (used by the compiler) to handle reStructuredText files programmatically:
Most (but not all) of these tools are based on Docutils (see above) and provide conversion to or from formats that might not be supported by the main distribution.
pip
-installable python package requires docutils
, which does the actual rendering. restview
's major ease-of-use feature is that, when you save changes to your document(s), it automagically re-renders and re-displays them. restview
docutils
to render your document(s) to HTMLSome projects use reStructuredText as a baseline to build on, or provide extra functionality extending the utility of the reStructuredText tools.
The Sphinx documentation generator translates a set of reStructuredText source files into various output formats, automatically producing cross-references, indices etc.
rest2web is a simple tool that lets you build your website from a single template (or as many as you want), and keep the contents in reStructuredText.
Pygments is a generic syntax highlighter for general use in all kinds of software such as forum systems, Wikis or other applications that need to prettify source code. See Using Pygments in reStructuredText documents.
While any plain text editor is suitable to write reStructuredText documents, some editors have better support than others.
The Emacs support via rst-mode comes as part of the Docutils package under /docutils/tools/editors/emacs/rst.el
The vim-common
package for that comes with most GNU/Linux distributions has reStructuredText syntax highlight and indentation support of reStructuredText out of the box:
There is a rst mode for the Jed programmers editor.
gedit, the official text editor of the GNOME desktop environment. There is a gedit reStructuredText plugin.
Geany, a small and lightweight Integrated Development Environment include support for reStructuredText from version 0.12 (October 10, 2007).
Leo, an outlining editor for programmers, supports reStructuredText via rst-plugin or via "@auto-rst" nodes (it's not well-documented, but @auto-rst nodes allow editing rst files directly, parsing the structure into the Leo outline).
It also provides a way to preview the resulting HTML, in a "viewrendered" pane.
The FTE Folding Text Editor - a free (licensed under the GNU GPL) text editor for developers. FTE has a mode for reStructuredText support. It provides color highlighting of basic RSTX elements and special menu that provide easy way to insert most popular RSTX elements to a document.
PyK is a successor of PyEdit and reStInPeace, written in Python with the help of the Qt4 toolkit.
The Eclipse IDE with the ReST Editor plug-in provides support for editing reStructuredText files.
NoTex is a browser based (general purpose) text editor, with integrated project management and syntax highlighting. Plus it enables to write books, reports, articles etc. using rST and convert them to LaTex, PDF or HTML. The PDF files are of high publication quality and are produced via Sphinx with the Texlive LaTex suite.
Notepad++ is a general purpose text editor for Windows. It has syntax highlighting for many languages built-in and support for reStructuredText via a user defined language for reStructuredText.
Visual Studio Code is a general purpose text editor for Windows/macOS/Linux. It has syntax highlighting for many languages built-in and supports reStructuredText via an extension from LeXtudio.
Sublime Text is a completely customizable and extensible source code editor available for Windows, OS X, and Linux. Registration is required for long-term use, but all functions are available in the unregistered version, with occasional reminders to purchase a license. Versions 2 and 3 (currently in beta) support reStructuredText syntax highlighting by default, and several plugins are available through the package manager Package Control to provide snippets and code completion, additional syntax highlighting, conversion to/from RST and other formats, and HTML preview in the browser.
BBEdit (and its free variant TextWrangler) for Mac can syntax-highlight reStructuredText using this codeless language module.
TextMate, a proprietary general-purpose GUI text editor for Mac OS X, has a bundle for reStructuredText.
Intype is a proprietary text editor for Windows, that support reStructuredText out of the box.
E is a proprietary Text Editor licensed under the "Open Company License". It supports TextMate's bundles, so it should support reStructuredText the same way TextMate does.
PyCharm (and other IntelliJ platform IDEs?) has ReST/Sphinx support (syntax highlighting, autocomplete and preview).)
here are some Wiki programs that support the reStructuredText markup as the native markup syntax, or as an add-on:
MediaWiki reStructuredText extension allows for reStructuredText markup in MediaWiki surrounded by <rst>
and </rst>
.
MoinMoin is an advanced, easy to use and extensible WikiEngine with a large community of users. Said in a few words, it is about collaboration on easily editable web pages.
There is a reStructuredText Parser for MoinMoin.
Trac is an enhanced wiki and issue tracking system for software development projects. There is a reStructuredText Support in Trac.
This Wiki is a Webware for Python Wiki written by Ian Bicking. This wiki uses ReStructuredText for its markup.
rstiki is a minimalist single-file personal wiki using reStructuredText syntax (via docutils) inspired by pwyky. It does not support authorship indication, versioning, hierarchy, chrome/framing/templating or styling. It leverages docutils/reStructuredText as the wiki syntax. As such, it's under 200 lines of code, and in a single file. You put it in a directory and it runs.
Ikiwiki is a wiki compiler. It converts wiki pages into HTML pages suitable for publishing on a website. Ikiwiki stores pages and history in a revision control system such as Subversion or Git. There are many other features, including support for blogging, as well as a large array of plugins. It's reStructuredText plugin, however is somewhat limited and is not recommended as its' main markup language at this time.
An Online reStructuredText editor can be used to play with the markup and see the results immediately.
WordPreSt reStructuredText plugin for WordPress. (PHP)
reStructuredText parser plugin for Zine (will become obsolete in version 0.2 when Zine is scheduled to get a native reStructuredText support). Zine is discontinued. (Python)
Pelican is a static blog generator that supports writing articles in ReST. (Python)
Hyde is a static website generator that supports ReST. (Python)
Acrylamid is a static blog generator that supports writing articles in ReST. (Python)
Nikola is a Static Site and Blog Generator that supports ReST. (Python)
Ipsum genera is a static blog generator written in Nim.
Yozuch is a static blog generator written in Python.