Emacs Support for reStructuredText
Abstract
High-level description of the existing emacs support for editing
reStructuredText text documents. Suggested setup code and usage
instructions are provided.
reStructuredText is a series of conventions that allows a
toolset--docutils--to extract generic document structure from simple
text files. For people who use Emacs, there is a package that adds a
major mode that supports editing in the conventions of
reStructuredText: rst.el. This document describes the features it
provides, and how to setup your emacs to use them and how to invoke
them.
The emacs support is implemented as an Emacs major mode (rst-mode)
provided by the rst.el emacs package. In order to use
rst-mode, you need to put the rst.el in a directory located in
your emacs load-path, and to load it with:
(require 'rst)
To enable rst-mode, simple type M-x rst-mode. Alternatively,
you can modify auto-mode-alist to automatically turn it on
whenever you visit reStructuredText documents:
(setq auto-mode-alist
(append '(("\\.txt$" . rst-mode)
("\\.rst$" . rst-mode)
("\\.rest$" . rst-mode)) auto-mode-alist))
If have local variables enabled (see enable-local-variables in the
Emacs manual), you can also add the following at the top of your
documents to trigger rst-mode:
.. -*- mode: rst -*-
Or this at the end of your documents:
..
Local Variables:
mode: rst
End:
rst-mode automatically binds several keys for invoking special
handy functions for editing ReStructuredText. As is the custom for
Emacs major modes, most keys are bound to C-c C-LETTER.
If you insert an inline table-of-contents at the top of the document,
you may want to add a hook to automatically update it everytime you
adjust a section title:
(add-hook 'rst-adjust-hook 'rst-toc-update)
Additional configuration variables can be customized and can be found
by browsing the source code for rst.el.
The rst package does not completely parse all the reStructuredText
constructs, but it contains the ability to recognize the section
decorations and to build the hierarchy of the document. What we call
section decorations or adornments are the underlines or under- and
overlines used to mark a section title.
There is a function that helps a great deal to maintain these
decorations: rst-adjust (bound to C-c C-a, or C-= by
default). This function is a Swiss army knife that can be invoked
repeatedly and whose behaviour depends on context:
If there is an incomplete underline, e.g.:
My Section Title
^^
Invocation will complete the section title. You can simply enter a
few characters of the title and invoke the function to complete it.
It can also be used to adjust the length of the existing decoration
when you need to edit the title.
If there is no section decoration, a decoration one level under the
last encountered section level is added;
If there is already a section decoration, it is promoted to the
next level. You can invoke it like this repeatedly to cycle the
title through the hierarchy of existing decorations.
Invoking the function with a negative prefix argument, e.g. C--
C-=, will effectively reverse the direction of decoration cycling.
To alternate between underline-only and over-and-under styles, you can
use a regular prefix argument, e.g. C-u C-=. See the
documentation of rst-adjust for more description of the prefix
arguments to alter the behaviour of the function.
If you open someone else's file and the decorations it contains are
unfamiliar, you may want to readjust them to fit your own preferred
hierarchy of decorations. This can be difficult to perform by hand.
However, you can do this easily by invoking
rst-straighten-decorations (C-c C-s), which operates on the
entire buffer.
You can set the variable rst-preferred-decorations to a list of
the decorations that you like to use for documents. Everyone has
their preference. rst-default-indent can be set to the number of
indent spaces preferred for the over-and-under decoration style.
You can visualize the hierarchy of the section decorations in the
current buffer by invoking rst-display-decorations-hierarchy,
bound on C-c C-h. A temporary buffer will appear with fake
section titles rendered in the style of the current document. This
can be useful when editing other people's documents to find out which
section decorations correspond to which levels.
You can move the cursor between the different section titles by using
the rst-backward-section and rst-forward-section functions, by
default bound to the C-c C-p and C-c C-n keys.
To mark the section that cursor lies in, use rst-mark-section
(C-c C-m).
Due to the nature of reStructuredText, lists are indented by two or
three characters, e.g. bulleted lists use two chars:
- Fruits
- Bananas
- Apples
- Oranges
- Veggies
- Zucchini
- Chick Peas
while enumerated lists are indented by 3 or more characters
9. Apples
Oranges are tasty.
10. Oranges
Oranges are zesty.
To this effect, when shifting text, it can be useful to have functions
which understand which indent to use by using the context around the
region. Those functions are rst-shift-region-right and
rst-shift-region-left.
You can use C-c C-r and C-c C-l to shift the active region.
These bindings are similar to the ones provided by python-mode for
editing python code and behave similarly. They automatically inspect
the lines of text before the currently selected region to determine
what the appropriate column positions are.
Sometimes it can be useful to insert bullet list markers enumeration
number before a number of lines or paragraphs. You can do this easily
by invoking rst-enumerate-region (C-c C-e), for example, the
following:
Apples
Oranges
Bananas
becomes:
1. Apples
2. Oranges
3. Bananas
rst-listify-region (C-c C-b) does the same, but only adds
bullet list markers, e.g.:
Apples
Oranges
Bananas
becomes:
- Apples
- Oranges
- Bananas
By default, each paragraph starting on the leftmost line in the
highlighted region will be taken to be a single list or enumeration
item, for example, enumerating the following:
An apple a day
keeps the doctor away.
But oranges
are tastier than apples.
If you preferred bananas
you may be
a monkey.
Will result in:
1. An apple a day
keeps the doctor away.
2. But oranges
are tastier than apples.
3. If you preferred bananas
you may be
a monkey.
If you would like to enumerate each of the lines, use a prefix
argument on the preceding commands, e.g.:
Apples
Oranges
Bananas
becomes:
- Apples
- Oranges
- Bananas
If you invoke rst-straighten-bullets-region (C-c C-w), the
existing bullets in the highlighted region will be replaced to reflect
their respective level. This does not make a difference in the
document structure that reStructuredText defines, but looks better in
the input file, for example, if all of the top-level bullet items use
the character -, and all of the 2nd level items use *, etc.
To create line blocks, first select the region to convert and invoke
rst-toggle-line-block with C-c C-d, for example, the
following:
Apples
Oranges
Bananas
becomes:
| Apples
| Oranges
| Bananas
This works even if the region is indented. To remove line blocks,
select a region and invoke with a prefix argument.
The major mode provides a number of functions for running documents
being edited through the docutils tools.
The main generic function is rst-compile (C-c 1). This
function basically creates a compilation command with the correct
output name for the current buffer and then invokes Emacs' compile
function. It also looks for the presence of a docutils.conf
configuration file in the parent directories and adds it to the
cmdline options. There is also an alternative function in case you
often need run your document in a second toolset (C-c 2).
You can customize the commands being used by setting
rst-compile-primary-toolset and rst-compile-secondary-toolset.
Other commands are available for other formats:
- rst-compile-pseudo-region (C-c 3): When crafting documents,
it is often convenient to view which data structures docutils will
parse them into. You can use to run the active region through
rst2pseudoxml.py and have the output automatically be displayed
in a new buffer.
- rst-compile-pdf-preview (C-c 4): Convert the current
document to PDF and launch a viewer on the results.
- rst-compile-slides-preview (C-c 5): Convert the current
document to S5 slides and view in a web browser.
When you are editing long documents, it can be a bit difficult to
orient yourself in the structure of your text. To that effect, a
function is provided that quickly parses the document and presents a
hierarchically indented table of contents of the document in a
temporary buffer, in which you can navigate and press Return to go
to a specific section.
Invoke this function (rst-toc) with C-c C-t. It should
present a temporary buffer that looks something like this:
Table of Contents:
Debugging Meta-Techniques
Introduction
Debugging Solution Patterns
Recognize That a Bug Exists
Subdivide and Isolate
Identify and Verify Assumptions
Use a Tool for Introspection
Change one thing at a time
Learn about the System
Understanding a bug
The Basic Steps in Debugging
Attitude
Bad Feelings
Good Feelings
References
When you select a section title (press RET), the temporary buffer
disappears and you are left with the cursor positioned at the chosen
section.
Oftentimes in long text documents that are meant to be read directly,
a Table of Contents is inserted at the beginning of the text. This is
the case for most internet FAQs, for example. In reStructuredText
documents, since the table of contents is automatically generated by
the parser with the .. contents:: directive, people generally have
not been adding a text table of contents to their source documents,
and partly because it is too much trouble to edit and maintain.
The emacs support for reStructuredText provides a function to insert
such a table of contents in your document. Since it is not meant to
be part of the document text, you should place such a table of
contents within a comment, so that it is ignored by the parser. This
is the favoured usage:
.. contents::
..
1 Introduction
2 Debugging Solution Patterns
2.1 Recognize That a Bug Exists
2.2 Subdivide and Isolate
2.3 Identify and Verify Assumptions
2.4 Use a Tool for Introspection
2.5 Change one thing at a time
2.6 Learn about the System
3 Understanding a bug
4 The Basic Steps in Debugging
5 Attitude
5.1 Bad Feelings
5.2 Good Feelings
6 References
Just place the cursor at the top-left corner where you want to insert
the TOC and invoke the function with C-c C-i. The table of
contents will display all the section titles that are under the
location where the insertion occurs. This way you can insert local
table of contents by placing them in the appropriate location.
If you have deep nesting of sections, you can use a numeric prefix
argument to limit the depth of rendering of the TOC.
You can also customize the look of the TOC by setting the values of
the following variables:: rst-toc-indent,
rst-toc-insert-style, rst-toc-insert-max-level.
Note
The table-of-contents inserted by rst-mode has text properties
added to it so that if you type C-c C-f while the cursor is on
one of its entries, the cursor will jump to the corresponding
section in the document.
One issue is that you will probably want to maintain the inserted
table of contents up-to-date. There is a function that will
automatically look for the inserted TOC (rst-toc-update)
and it can be added to a hook on the section decoration adjustment
function, so that every time you adjust a section title, the TOC is
updated. Add this functionality with the following emacs
configuration:
(add-hook 'rst-adjust-hook 'rst-toc-update)
You can invoke the update on the current buffer with C-c C-u.
rst-mode also provides syntax highlighting to reStructuredText
constructs. (This mode was written by Stefan Merten.)
Lazy syntax coloring is implemented for many of the constructs that
reStructuredText prescribes. By default, the font-lock colouring is
performed lazily. If you don't like this, you can turn this off by
setting the value of rst-mode-lazy. You can also change the
various colours (see the source file for the whole list of
customizable faces).
font-lock syntax highlighting is enabled by default. If you prefer
to turn off syntax highlighting (on some machines it can slow down
editing a little bit), you can use the following in your Emacs
configuration:
(setq font-lock-global-modes '(not rst-mode))
The rst-faces group contains all necessary for customizing
fonts. The default settings use standard font-lock-*-face so if
you set these to your liking they are probably good in rst-mode also.
The group is contained in the faces group as well as in the rst group.
The rst-faces-defaults group contains all necessary for
customizing the default fonts used for section title faces.
The general idea for section title faces is to have a non-default
background but do not change the background. The section level is
shown by the lightness of the background color. If you like this
general idea of generating faces for section titles but do not like
the details this group is the point where you can customize the
details. If you do not like the general idea, however, you should
customize the faces used in rst-adornment-faces-alist.
Note: If you are using a dark background please make sure the variable
frame-background-mode is set to the symbol dark. This triggers
some default values which are probably right for you.
The group is contained in the rst-faces group.
All customizable features have a comment explaining their
meaning. Refer to the customization of your Emacs (try M-x
customize).
This section covers general emacs text-mode settings that are useful
in the context of reStructuredText conventions. These are not
provided by rst.el but you may find them useful specifically for
reStructuredText documents.
Consult the Emacs manual for more text-mode customizations. In
particular, you may be interested in setting the following variables,
functions and modes that pertain somewhat to text-mode:
- indent-tabs-mode
- colon-double-space
- auto-fill-mode
- auto-mode-alist
- fill-region
Since reStructuredText punts on the issue of character processing,
here are some useful resources for Emacs users in the Unicode world:
xmlunicode.el and unichars.el from Norman Walsh
An essay by Tim Bray, with example code
For Emacs users on Mac OS X, here are some useful useful additions
to your .emacs file.
To get direct keyboard input of non-ASCII characters (like
"option-e e" resulting in "é" [eacute]), first enable the option
key by setting the command key as your meta key:
(setq mac-command-key-is-meta t) ;; nil for option key
Next, use one of these lines:
(set-keyboard-coding-system 'mac-roman)
(setq mac-keyboard-text-encoding kTextEncodingISOLatin1)
I prefer the first line, because it enables non-Latin-1 characters
as well (em-dash, curly quotes, etc.).
To enable the display of all characters in the Mac-Roman charset,
first create a fontset listing the fonts to use for each range of
characters using charsets that Emacs understands:
(create-fontset-from-fontset-spec
"-apple-monaco-medium-r-normal--10-*-*-*-*-*-fontset-monaco,
ascii:-apple-monaco-medium-r-normal--10-100-75-75-m-100-mac-roman,
latin-iso8859-1:-apple-monaco-medium-r-normal--10-100-75-75-m-100-mac-roman,
mule-unicode-0100-24ff:-apple-monaco-medium-r-normal--10-100-75-75-m-100-mac-roman")
Latin-1 doesn't cover characters like em-dash and curly quotes, so
"mule-unicode-0100-24ff" is needed.
Next, use that fontset:
(set-frame-font "fontset-monaco")
To enable cooperation between the system clipboard and the Emacs
kill ring, add this line:
(set-clipboard-coding-system 'mac-roman)
Other useful resources are in Andrew Choi's Emacs 21 for Mac OS X
FAQ.
No matter what platform (or editor) you're using, I recommend the
ProFont programmer's font. It's monospaced, small but readable,
similar characters are visually distinctive (like "I1l|", "0O", "ao",
and ".,:;"), and free.
- The automatic section adjustment and table of contents features were
written by Martin Blais;
- Syntax highlighting was implemented by Stefan Merten;
- Various other functions were implemented by David Goodger.
On 2005-10-30, rst.el integrated and replaced the contents of the
following files:
- restructuredtext.el
- rst-html.el
- rst-mode.el