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The Docutils Publisher

Author: David Goodger
Contact: docutils-develop@lists.sourceforge.net
Date: 2022-04-02
Revision: 9051
Copyright: This document has been placed in the public domain.

Contents

The docutils.core.Publisher class is the core of Docutils, managing all the processing and relationships between components. See PEP 258 for an overview of Docutils components.

The docutils.core.publish_* convenience functions are the normal entry points for using Docutils as a library.

See Inside A Docutils Command-Line Front-End Tool for an overview of a typical Docutils front-end tool, including how the Publisher class is used.

Publisher Convenience Functions

Each of these functions set up a docutils.core.Publisher object, then call its publish method. docutils.core.Publisher.publish handles everything else. There are several convenience functions in the docutils.core module:

publish_cmdline():
 

for command-line front-end tools, like rst2html.py. There are several examples in the tools/ directory. A detailed analysis of one such tool is in Inside A Docutils Command-Line Front-End Tool

publish_file():

for programmatic use with file-like I/O. In addition to writing the encoded output to a file, also returns the encoded output as a string.

publish_string():
 

for programmatic use with string I/O. Returns the encoded output as a string.

publish_parts():
 

for programmatic use with string input; returns a dictionary of document parts. Dictionary keys are the names of parts, and values are Unicode strings; encoding is up to the client. Useful when only portions of the processed document are desired. See publish_parts() Details below.

There are usage examples in the docutils/examples.py module.

publish_doctree():
 

for programmatic use with string input; returns a Docutils document tree data structure (doctree). The doctree can be modified, pickled & unpickled, etc., and then reprocessed with publish_from_doctree().

publish_from_doctree():
 

for programmatic use to render from an existing document tree data structure (doctree); returns the encoded output as a string.

publish_programmatically():
 

for custom programmatic use. This function implements common code and is used by publish_file, publish_string, and publish_parts. It returns a 2-tuple: the encoded string output and the Publisher object.

Configuration

To pass application-specific setting defaults to the Publisher convenience functions, use the settings_overrides parameter. Pass a dictionary of setting names & values, like this:

overrides = {'input_encoding': 'ascii',
             'output_encoding': 'latin-1'}
output = publish_string(..., settings_overrides=overrides)

Settings from command-line options override configuration file settings, and they override application defaults. For details, see Docutils Runtime Settings. See Docutils Configuration for details about individual settings.

Encodings

The default output encoding of Docutils is UTF-8. Docutils may introduce some non-ASCII text if you use auto-symbol footnotes or the "contents" directive.

publish_parts() Details

The docutils.core.publish_parts() convenience function returns a dictionary of document parts. Dictionary keys are the names of parts, and values are Unicode strings.

Each Writer component may publish a different set of document parts, described below. Not all writers implement all parts.

Parts Provided By All Writers

encoding
The output encoding setting.
version
The version of Docutils used.
whole
parts['whole'] contains the entire formatted document.

Parts Provided By the HTML Writers

HTML4 Writer

body
parts['body'] is equivalent to parts['fragment']. It is not equivalent to parts['html_body'].
body_prefix

parts['body_prefix'] contains:

</head>
<body>
<div class="document" ...>

and, if applicable:

<div class="header">
...
</div>
body_pre_docinfo

parts['body_pre_docinfo] contains (as applicable):

<h1 class="title">...</h1>
<h2 class="subtitle" id="...">...</h2>
body_suffix

parts['body_suffix'] contains:

</div>

(the end-tag for <div class="document">), the footer division if applicable:

<div class="footer">
...
</div>

and:

</body>
</html>
docinfo
parts['docinfo'] contains the document bibliographic data, the docinfo field list rendered as a table.
footer
parts['footer'] contains the document footer content, meant to appear at the bottom of a web page, or repeated at the bottom of every printed page.
fragment
parts['fragment'] contains the document body (not the HTML <body>). In other words, it contains the entire document, less the document title, subtitle, docinfo, header, and footer.
head
parts['head'] contains <meta ... /> tags and the document <title>...</title>.
head_prefix
parts['head_prefix'] contains the XML declaration, the DOCTYPE declaration, the <html ...> start tag and the <head> start tag.
header
parts['header'] contains the document header content, meant to appear at the top of a web page, or repeated at the top of every printed page.
html_body
parts['html_body'] contains the HTML <body> content, less the <body> and </body> tags themselves.
html_head

parts['html_head'] contains the HTML <head> content, less the stylesheet link and the <head> and </head> tags themselves. Since publish_parts returns Unicode strings and does not know about the output encoding, the "Content-Type" meta tag's "charset" value is left unresolved, as "%s":

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=%s" />

The interpolation should be done by client code.

html_prolog

parts['html_prolog] contains the XML declaration and the doctype declaration. The XML declaration's "encoding" attribute's value is left unresolved, as "%s":

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="%s" ?>

The interpolation should be done by client code.

html_subtitle
parts['html_subtitle'] contains the document subtitle, including the enclosing <h2 class="subtitle"> & </h2> tags.
html_title
parts['html_title'] contains the document title, including the enclosing <h1 class="title"> & </h1> tags.
meta
parts['meta'] contains all <meta ... /> tags.
stylesheet
parts['stylesheet'] contains the embedded stylesheet or stylesheet link.
subtitle
parts['subtitle'] contains the document subtitle text and any inline markup. It does not include the enclosing <h2> & </h2> tags.
title
parts['title'] contains the document title text and any inline markup. It does not include the enclosing <h1> & </h1> tags.

PEP/HTML Writer

The PEP/HTML writer provides the same parts as the HTML4 writer, plus the following:

pepnum
parts['pepnum'] contains

S5/HTML Writer

The S5/HTML writer provides the same parts as the HTML4 writer.

HTML5 Writer

The HTML5 writer provides the same parts as the HTML4 writer. However, it uses semantic HTML5 elements for the document, header and footer.

Parts Provided by the LaTeX2e Writer

See the template files for examples how these parts can be combined into a valid LaTeX document.

abstract
parts['abstract'] contains the formatted content of the 'abstract' docinfo field.
body

parts['body'] contains the document's content. In other words, it contains the entire document, except the document title, subtitle, and docinfo.

This part can be included into another LaTeX document body using the \input{} command.

body_pre_docinfo
parts['body_pre_docinfo] contains the \maketitle command.
dedication
parts['dedication'] contains the formatted content of the 'dedication' docinfo field.
docinfo

parts['docinfo'] contains the document bibliographic data, the docinfo field list rendered as a table.

With --use-latex-docinfo 'author', 'organization', 'contact', 'address' and 'date' info is moved to titledata.

'dedication' and 'abstract' are always moved to separate parts.

fallbacks
parts['fallbacks'] contains fallback definitions for Docutils-specific commands and environments.
head_prefix
parts['head_prefix'] contains the declaration of documentclass and document options.
latex_preamble
parts['latex_preamble'] contains the argument of the --latex-preamble option.
pdfsetup
parts['pdfsetup'] contains the PDF properties ("hyperref" package setup).
requirements
parts['requirements'] contains required packages and setup before the stylesheet inclusion.
stylesheet
parts['stylesheet'] contains the embedded stylesheet(s) or stylesheet loading command(s).
subtitle
parts['subtitle'] contains the document subtitle text and any inline markup.
title
parts['title'] contains the document title text and any inline markup.
titledata

parts['titledata] contains the combined title data in \title, \author, and \data macros.

With --use-latex-docinfo, this includes the 'author', 'organization', 'contact', 'address' and 'date' docinfo items.