Image

An "image" is a simple picture:

.. image:: picture.png

The URI for the image source file is specified in the directive argument. As with hyperlink targets, the image URI may begin on the same line as the explicit markup start and target name, or it may begin in an indented text block immediately following, with no intervening blank lines. If there are multiple lines in the link block, they are stripped of leading and trailing whitespace and joined together.

Optionally, the image link block may contain a flat field list, the image options. For example:

.. image:: picture.jpeg
   :height: 100
   :width: 200
   :scale: 50
   :alt: alternate text
   :align: right

The following options are recognized:

alt : text

Alternate text: a short description of the image, displayed by applications that cannot display images, or spoken by applications for visually impaired users.

height : integer

The height of the image in pixels, used to reserve space or scale the image vertically.

width : integer

The width of the image in pixels, used to reserve space or scale the image horizontally.

scale : integer

The uniform scaling factor of the image, a percentage (but no "%" symbol is required or allowed). "100" means full-size.

align : "top", "middle", "bottom", "left", "center", or "right"

The alignment of the image, equivalent to the HTML <img> tag's "align" attribute. The values "top", "middle", and "bottom" control an image's vertical alignment (relative to the text baseline); they are only useful for inline images (substitutions). The values "left", "center", and "right" control an image's horizontal alignment, allowing the image to float and have the text flow around it. The specific behavior depends upon the browser or rendering software used.

usemap : text

Specifies the name of a map to be used with HTML's <usemap> tag so that clicking on the image can traverse a URI.

Figure

A "figure" consists of image data (including image options), an optional caption (a single paragraph), and an optional legend (arbitrary body elements):

.. figure:: picture.png
   :scale: 50
   :alt: map to buried treasure

   This is the caption of the figure (a simple paragraph).

   The legend consists of all elements after the caption.  In this
   case, the legend consists of this paragraph and the following
   table:

   +-----------------------+-----------------------+
   | Symbol                | Meaning               |
   +=======================+=======================+
   | .. image:: tent.png   | Campground            |
   +-----------------------+-----------------------+
   | .. image:: waves.png  | Lake                  |
   +-----------------------+-----------------------+
   | .. image:: peak.png   | Mountain              |
   +-----------------------+-----------------------+

There must be blank lines before the caption paragraph and before the legend. To specify a legend without a caption, use an empty comment ("..") in place of the caption.

The "figure" directive supports all of the options of the "image" directive (see image options above).

Topic

A topic is like a block quote with a title, or a self-contained section with no subsections. Use the "topic" directive to indicate a self-contained idea that is separate from the flow of the document. Topics may occur anywhere a section or transition may occur. Body elements (including topics) may not contain nested topics.

The directive's sole argument is interpreted as the topic title; the next line must be blank. All subsequent lines make up the topic body, interpreted as body elements. For example:

.. topic:: Topic Title

    Subsequent indented lines comprise
    the body of the topic, and are
    interpreted as body elements.

Sidebar

Sidebars are like miniature, parallel documents that occur inside other documents, providing related or reference material. A sidebar is typically offset by a border and "floats" to the side of the page; the document's main text may flow around it. Sidebars can also be likened to super-footnotes; their content is outside of the flow of the document's main text.

Sidebars may occur anywhere a section or transition may occur. Body elements (including sidebars) may not contain nested sidebars.

The directive's sole argument is interpreted as the sidebar title, which may be followed by a subtitle option (see below); the next line must be blank. All subsequent lines make up the sidebar body, interpreted as body elements. For example:

.. sidebar:: Sidebar Title
   :subtitle: Optional Sidebar Subtitle

   Subsequent indented lines comprise
   the body of the sidebar, and are
   interpreted as body elements.

The following options are recognized:

subtitle : text

The sidebar's subtitle.

Line Block

The "line-block" directive constructs an element where line breaks and initial indentation is significant and inline markup is supported. It is equivalent to a parsed literal block with different rendering: typically in an ordinary serif typeface instead of a typewriter/monospaced face, and not automatically indented. (Have the line-block directive begin a block quote to get an indented line block.) Line blocks are useful for address blocks and verse (poetry, song lyrics), where the structure of lines is significant. For example, here's a classic:

"To Ma Own Beloved Lassie: A Poem on her 17th Birthday", by
Ewan McTeagle (for Lassie O'Shea):

    .. line-block::

        Lend us a couple of bob till Thursday.
        I'm absolutely skint.
        But I'm expecting a postal order and I can pay you back
            as soon as it comes.
        Love, Ewan.

Parsed Literal Block

Unlike an ordinary literal block, the "parsed-literal" directive constructs a literal block where the text is parsed for inline markup. It is equivalent to a line block with different rendering: typically in a typewriter/monospaced typeface, like an ordinary literal block. Parsed literal blocks are useful for adding hyperlinks to code examples.

However, care must be taken with the text, because inline markup is recognized and there is no protection from parsing. Backslash-escapes may be necessary to prevent unintended parsing. And because the markup characters are removed by the parser, care must also be taken with vertical alignment. Parsed "ASCII art" is tricky, and extra whitespace may be necessary.

For example, all the element names in this content model are links:

.. parsed-literal::

    ((title_,
      subtitle_?)?,
     docinfo_?,
     decoration_?,
     `%structure.model;`_)

Table of Contents

The "contents" directive inserts a table of contents (TOC) in two passes: initial parse and transform. During the initial parse, a "pending" element is generated which acts as a placeholder, storing the TOC title and any options internally. At a later stage in the processing, the "pending" element is replaced by a "topic" element, a title and the table of contents proper.

The directive in its simplest form:

.. contents::

Language-dependent boilerplate text will be used for the title. The English default title text is "Contents".

An explicit title, may be specified:

.. contents:: Table of Contents

The title may span lines, although it is not recommended:

.. contents:: Here's a very long Table of
   Contents title

Options may be specified for the directive, using a field list:

.. contents:: Table of Contents
   :depth: 2

If the default title is to be used, the options field list may begin on the same line as the directive marker:

.. contents:: :depth: 2

The following options are recognized:

depth : integer

The number of section levels that are collected in the table of contents. The default is unlimited depth.

local : flag (empty)

Generate a local table of contents. Entries will only include subsections of the section in which the directive is given. If no explicit title is given, the table of contents will not be titled.

backlinks : "entry" or "top" or "none"

Generate links from section headers back to the table of contents entries, the table of contents itself, or generate no backlinks.

Automatic Section Numbering

The "sectnum" (or "section-autonumbering") directive automatically numbers sections and subsections in a document. Section numbers are of the "multiple enumeration" form, where each level has a number, separated by periods. For example, the title of section 1, subsection 2, subsubsection 3 would have "1.2.3" prefixed.

The "sectnum" directive does its work in two passes: the initial parse and a transform. During the initial parse, a "pending" element is generated which acts as a placeholder, storing any options internally. At a later stage in the processing, the "pending" element triggers a transform, which adds section numbers to titles. Section numbers are enclosed in a "generated" element, and titles have their "auto" attribute set to "1".

The following options are recognized:

depth : integer

The number of section levels that are numbered by this directive. The default is unlimited depth.

Target Footnotes

The "target-notes" directive creates a footnote for each external target in the text, and corresponding footnote references after each reference. For every explicit target (of the form, .. _target name: URL) in the text, a footnote will be generated containing the visible URL as content.

Footnotes

NOT IMPLEMENTED YET

@@@

Citations

NOT IMPLEMENTED YET

@@@

Meta

The "meta" directive is used to specify HTML metadata stored in HTML META tags. "Metadata" is data about data, in this case data about web pages. Metadata is used to describe and classify web pages in the World Wide Web, in a form that is easy for search engines to extract and collate.

Within the directive block, a flat field list provides the syntax for metadata. The field name becomes the contents of the "name" attribute of the META tag, and the field body (interpreted as a single string without inline markup) becomes the contents of the "content" attribute. For example:

.. meta::
   :description: The reStructuredText plaintext markup language
   :keywords: plaintext, markup language

This would be converted to the following HTML:

<meta name="description"
    content="The reStructuredText plaintext markup language">
<meta name="keywords" content="plaintext, markup language">

Support for other META attributes ("http-equiv", "scheme", "lang", "dir") are provided through field arguments, which must be of the form "attr=value":

.. meta::
   :description lang=en: An amusing story
   :description lang=fr: Un histoire amusant

And their HTML equivalents:

<meta name="description" lang="en" content="An amusing story">
<meta name="description" lang="fr" content="Un histoire amusant">

Some META tags use an "http-equiv" attribute instead of the "name" attribute. To specify "http-equiv" META tags, simply omit the name:

.. meta::
   :http-equiv=Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1

HTML equivalent:

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type"
     content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">

Imagemap

NOT IMPLEMENTED YET

Non-standard element: imagemap.

If

The "if" directive executes its argument as a Perl expression. If the Perl expression evaluates to true, then the directive's content is parsed as reStructuredText input and included in the document. If the Perl expression evaluates to false, then the content of the directive is omitted. This behavior can be useful for putting comments in a reStructuredText document that should not be propagated to the output as comments.

The "if" directive processes the following define:

-D perl='$a=1; $b=2'

Perl

The "perl" directive executes perl code and interpolates whatever is returned by the execution. The perl code can be placed either in the arguments or the contents section (or both).

The perl directive defines the following global variables:

$SOURCE

The name of the source file containing the perl directive.

$LINENO

The line number of the perl directive within $SOURCE.

The following defines are processed by the perl directive:

-D perl='$a=1; $b=2'

The following options are recognized:

literal : flag (empty)

The entire returned text is inserted into the document as a single literal block (useful for debugging). If this option is not present, the return value is interpreted based on its type. If you return a text string, the text is interpreted as reStructuredText and is parsed again. If you return an internal DOM object (or list of them), the object is included directly into the parsed DOM structure. (This latter option requires knowledge of trip internals, but is the only way to create a pending DOM object for execution at transformation time rather than parse time.)

System

The "system" directive executes its arguments as a system (shell) command and interpolates whatever is returned by the execution.

The following options are recognized:

literal : flag (empty)

The entire returned text is inserted into the document as a single literal block (useful for debugging).

Including an External Document Fragment

The "include" directive reads a reStructuredText-formatted text file and parses it in the current document's context at the point of the directive. The directive argument is the path to the file to be included, relative to the document containing the directive. For example:

This first example will be parsed at the document level, and can
thus contain any construct, including section headers.

.. include:: inclusion.txt

Back in the main document.

    This second example will be parsed in a block quote context.
    Therefore it may only contain body elements.  It may not
    contain section headers.

    .. include:: inclusion.txt

If an included document fragment contains section structure, the title adornments must match those of the master document.

The following options are recognized:

literal : flag (empty)

The entire included text is inserted into the document as a single literal block (useful for program listings).

Raw Data Pass-Through

The "raw" directive indicates non-reStructuredText data that is to be passed untouched to the Writer. The name of the output format is given in the first argument. During the initial parse, a "pending" element is generated which acts as a placeholder, storing the format and raw data internally. The interpretation of the raw data is up to the Writer. A Writer may ignore any raw output not matching its format.

For example, the following input would be passed untouched by an HTML Writer:

.. raw:: html

   <hr width=50 size=10>

A LaTeX Writer could insert the following raw content into its output stream:

.. raw:: latex

   \setlength{\parindent}{0pt}

Raw data can also be read from an external file, specified in a directive option. In this case, the content block must be empty. For example:

.. raw:: html
   :file: inclusion.html

The following options are recognized:

file : string

The local filesystem path of a raw data file to be included.

url : string

An Internet URL reference to a raw data file to be included.

Replacement Text

The "replace" directive is used to indicate replacement text for a substitution reference. It may be used within substitution definitions only. For example, this directive can be used to expand abbreviations:

.. |reST| replace:: reStructuredText

Yes, |reST| is a long word, so I can't blame anyone for wanting to
abbreviate it.

As reStructuredText doesn't support nested inline markup, the only way to create a reference with styled text is to use substitutions with the "replace" directive:

I recommend you try |Python|_.

.. |Python| replace:: Python, *the* best language around
.. _Python: http://www.python.org/

Restructuredtext-Test-Directive

This directive is provided for test purposes only. (Nobody is expected to type in a name that long!) It is converted into a level-1 (info) system message showing the directive data, possibly followed by a literal block containing the rest of the directive block.