How to use color in text with ReStructured Text (rst2html.py) or how to insert HTML tags without blank lines?

Question

How can I use color with ReStructured Text? For example, **hello** translates into hello. How can I make ReStructure(r

Answer 1

The other answer here hints at what I wanted to do, but it assumes some detailed knowledge about stylesheets in docutils. Here is a a cookbook explanation:

In your RST file, declare the role once, then use it:

    .. role:: red

    This text is :red:`colored red` and so is :red:`this`

Then you need a style sheet file. First, use Python to copy the default style sheet out of the docutils package:

    python
    import os.path
    import shutil
    import docutils.writers.html4css1 as h
    shutil.copy(os.path.dirname(h.__file__)+"/html4css1.css","my.css")

Then edit my.css to add your customizations at the end:

    .red {
            color: red;
    }

Create a docutils configuration file named "docutils.conf":

    [html4css1 writer]
    stylesheet-path: my.css
    embed-stylesheet: yes

use rst2html.py to convert your document:

    rst2html.py my_document.rst > my_document.html

If you don't want to use docutils.conf, you can specify the style sheet every time you run rst2html:

    rst2html.py --stylesheet my.css my_document.rst > my_document.html

AFAIK, there is no way to specify the style sheet in the RST file.