
Sphinx FAQ
**********

This is a list of Frequently Asked Questions about Sphinx.  Feel free
to suggest new entries!


How do I...
===========

... create PDF files without LaTeX?
   You can use rst2pdf version 0.12 or greater which comes with built-
   in Sphinx integration.  See the *Available builders* section for
   details.

... get section numbers?
   They are automatic in LaTeX output; for HTML, give a ":numbered:"
   option to the "toctree" directive where you want to start
   numbering.

... customize the look of the built HTML files?
   Use themes, see *HTML theming support*.

... add global substitutions or includes?
   Add them in the "rst_epilog" config value.

... display the whole TOC tree in the sidebar?
   Use the "toctree" callable in a custom layout template, probably in
   the "sidebartoc" block.

... write my own extension?
   See the *extension tutorial*.

... convert from my existing docs using MoinMoin markup?
   The easiest way is to convert to xhtml, then convert xhtml to reST.
   You'll still need to mark up classes and such, but the headings and
   code examples come through cleanly.


Using Sphinx with...
====================

Read the Docs
   http://readthedocs.org is a documentation hosting service based
   around Sphinx. They will host sphinx documentation, along with
   supporting a number of other features including version support,
   PDF generation, and more. The Getting Started guide is a good place
   to start.

Epydoc
   There's a third-party extension providing an api role which refers
   to Epydoc's API docs for a given identifier.

Doxygen
   Michael Jones is developing a reST/Sphinx bridge to doxygen called
   breathe.

SCons
   Glenn Hutchings has written a SCons build script to build Sphinx
   documentation; it is hosted here: https://bitbucket.org/zondo
   /sphinx-scons

PyPI
   Jannis Leidel wrote a setuptools command that automatically uploads
   Sphinx documentation to the PyPI package documentation area at
   http://packages.python.org/.

GitHub Pages
   Directories starting with underscores are ignored by default which
   breaks static files in Sphinx.  GitHub's preprocessor can be
   disabled to support Sphinx HTML output properly.

MediaWiki
   See https://bitbucket.org/kevindunn/sphinx-wiki, a project by Kevin
   Dunn.

Google Analytics
   You can use a custom "layout.html" template, like this:

      {% extends "!layout.html" %}

      {%- block extrahead %}
      {{ super() }}
      <script type="text/javascript">
        var _gaq = _gaq || [];
        _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'XXX account number XXX']);
        _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);
      </script>
      {% endblock %}

      {% block footer %}
      {{ super() }}
      <div class="footer">This page uses <a href="http://analytics.google.com/">
      Google Analytics</a> to collect statistics. You can disable it by blocking
      the JavaScript coming from www.google-analytics.com.
      <script type="text/javascript">
        (function() {
          var ga = document.createElement('script');
          ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ?
                    'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';
          ga.setAttribute('async', 'true');
          document.documentElement.firstChild.appendChild(ga);
        })();
      </script>
      </div>
      {% endblock %}


Epub info
=========

The epub builder is currently in an experimental stage.  It has only
been tested with the Sphinx documentation itself.  If you want to
create epubs, here are some notes:

* Split the text into several files. The longer the individual HTML
  files are, the longer it takes the ebook reader to render them.  In
  extreme cases, the rendering can take up to one minute.

* Try to minimize the markup.  This also pays in rendering time.

* For some readers you can use embedded or external fonts using the
  CSS "@font-face" directive.  This is *extremely* useful for code
  listings which are often cut at the right margin.  The default
  Courier font (or variant) is quite wide and you can only display up
  to 60 characters on a line.  If you replace it with a narrower font,
  you can get more characters on a line.  You may even use FontForge
  and create narrow variants of some free font.  In my case I get up
  to 70 characters on a line.

  You may have to experiment a little until you get reasonable
  results.

* Test the created epubs. You can use several alternatives.  The ones
  I am aware of are Epubcheck, Calibre, FBreader (although it does not
  render the CSS), and Bookworm.  For bookworm you can download the
  source from http://code.google.com/p/threepress/ and run your own
  local server.

* Large floating divs are not displayed properly. If they cover more
  than one page, the div is only shown on the first page. In that case
  you can copy the "epub.css" from the "sphinx/themes/epub/static/"
  directory to your local "_static/" directory and remove the float
  settings.

* Files that are inserted outside of the "toctree" directive must be
  manually included. This sometimes applies to appendixes, e.g. the
  glossary or the indices.  You can add them with the
  "epub_post_files" option.


Texinfo info
============

The Texinfo builder is currently in an experimental stage but has
successfully been used to build the documentation for both Sphinx and
Python.  The intended use of this builder is to generate Texinfo that
is then processed into Info files.

There are two main programs for reading Info files, "info" and GNU
Emacs.  The "info" program has less features but is available in most
Unix environments and can be quickly accessed from the terminal.
Emacs provides better font and color display and supports extensive
customization (of course).


Displaying Links
----------------

One noticeable problem you may encounter with the generated Info files
is how references are displayed.  If you read the source of an Info
file, a reference to this section would look like:

   * note Displaying Links: target-id

In the stand-alone reader, "info", references are displayed just as
they appear in the source.  Emacs, on the other-hand, will by default
replace "\*note:" with "see" and hide the "target-id".  For example:

   *Displaying Links*

The exact behavior of how Emacs displays references is dependent on
the variable "Info-hide-note-references".  If set to the value of
"hide", Emacs will hide both the "\*note:" part and the "target-id".
This is generally the best way to view Sphinx-based documents since
they often make frequent use of links and do not take this limitation
into account.  However, changing this variable affects how all Info
documents are displayed and most due take this behavior into account.

If you want Emacs to display Info files produced by Sphinx using the
value "hide" for "Info-hide-note-references" and the default value for
all other Info files, try adding the following Emacs Lisp code to your
start-up file, "~/.emacs.d/init.el".

   (defadvice info-insert-file-contents (after
                                         sphinx-info-insert-file-contents
                                         activate)
     "Hack to make `Info-hide-note-references' buffer-local and
   automatically set to `hide' iff it can be determined that this file
   was created from a Texinfo file generated by Docutils or Sphinx."
     (set (make-local-variable 'Info-hide-note-references)
          (default-value 'Info-hide-note-references))
     (save-excursion
       (save-restriction
         (widen) (goto-char (point-min))
         (when (re-search-forward
                "^Generated by \\(Sphinx\\|Docutils\\)"
                (save-excursion (search-forward "\x1f" nil t)) t)
           (set (make-local-variable 'Info-hide-note-references)
                'hide)))))


Notes
-----

The following notes may be helpful if you want to create Texinfo
files:

* Each section corresponds to a different "node" in the Info file.

* Colons (":") cannot be properly escaped in menu entries and xrefs.
  They will be replaced with semicolons (";").

* In the HTML and Tex output, the word "see" is automatically inserted
  before all xrefs.

* Links to external Info files can be created using the somewhat
  official URI scheme "info".  For example:

     info:Texinfo#makeinfo_options

  which produces:

     info:Texinfo#makeinfo_options

* Inline markup appears as follows in Info:

  * strong -- *strong*

  * emphasis -- _emphasis_

  * literal -- `literal'

  It is possible to change this behavior using the Texinfo command
  "@definfoenclose".  For example, to make inline markup more closely
  resemble reST, add the following to your "conf.py":

     texinfo_elements = {'preamble': """\
     @definfoenclose strong,**,**
     @definfoenclose emph,*,*
     @definfoenclose code,`@w{}`,`@w{}`
     """}
