summaryrefslogtreecommitdiff
path: root/docs/dev/hacking.txt
blob: d0ec9a3fb7f9629cffab511e07cc5ef068f9ee99 (plain)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
==========================
 Docutils_ Hacker's Guide
==========================

:Author: Felix Wiemann
:Contact: Felix.Wiemann@ososo.de
:Revision: $Revision$
:Date: $Date$
:Copyright: This document has been placed in the public domain.

:Abstract: This is the introduction to Docutils for all persons who
    want to extend Docutils in some way.
:Prerequisites: You have used reStructuredText_ and played around with
    the `Docutils front-end tools`_ before.  Some (basic) Python
    knowledge is certainly helpful (though not necessary, strictly
    speaking).

.. _Docutils: http://docutils.sourceforge.net/
.. _reStructuredText: http://docutils.sourceforge.net/rst.html
.. _Docutils front-end tools: ../user/tools.html

.. contents::


Overview of the Docutils Architecture
=====================================

To give you an understanding of the Docutils architecture, we'll dive
right into the internals using a practical example.

Consider the following reStructuredText file::

    My *favorite* language is Python_.

    .. _Python: http://www.python.org/

Using the ``rst2html.py`` front-end tool, you would get an HTML output
which looks like this::

    [uninteresting HTML code removed]
    <body>
    <div class="document">
    <p>My <em>favorite</em> language is <a class="reference" href="http://www.python.org/">Python</a>.</p>
    </div>
    </body>
    </html>

While this looks very simple, it's enough to illustrate all internal
processing stages of Docutils.  Let's see how this document is
processed from the reStructuredText source to the final HTML output:


Reading the Document
--------------------

The **Reader** reads the document from the source file and passes it
to the parser (see below).  The default reader is the standalone
reader (``docutils/readers/standalone.py``) which just reads the input
data from a single text file.  Unless you want to do really fancy
things, there is no need to change that.

Since you probably won't need to touch readers, we will just move on
to the next stage:


Parsing the Document
--------------------

The **Parser** analyzes the the input document and creates a **node
tree** representation.  In this case we are using the
**reStructuredText parser** (``docutils/parsers/rst/__init__.py``).
To see what that node tree looks like, we call ``quicktest.py`` (which
can be found in the ``tools/`` directory of the Docutils distribution)
with our example file (``test.txt``) as first parameter (Windows users
might need to type ``python quicktest.py test.txt``)::

    $ quicktest.py test.txt
    <document source="test.txt">
        <paragraph>
            My
            <emphasis>
                favorite
             language is
            <reference name="Python" refname="python">
                Python
            .
        <target ids="python" names="python" refuri="http://www.python.org/">

Let us now examine the node tree:

The top-level node is ``document``.  It has a ``source`` attribute
whose value is ``text.txt``.  There are two children: A ``paragraph``
node and a ``target`` node.  The ``paragraph`` in turn has children: A
text node ("My "), an ``emphasis`` node, a text node (" language is "),
a ``reference`` node, and again a ``Text`` node (".").

These node types (``document``, ``paragraph``, ``emphasis``, etc.) are
all defined in ``docutils/nodes.py``.  The node types are internally
arranged as a class hierarchy (for example, both ``emphasis`` and
``reference`` have the common superclass ``Inline``).  To get an
overview of the node class hierarchy, use epydoc (type ``epydoc
nodes.py``) and look at the class hierarchy tree.


Transforming the Document
-------------------------

In the node tree above, the ``reference`` node does not contain the
target URI (``http://www.python.org/``) yet.

Assigning the target URI (from the ``target`` node) to the
``reference`` node is *not* done by the parser (the parser only
translates the input document into a node tree).

Instead, it's done by a **Transform**.  In this case (resolving a
reference), it's done by the ``ExternalTargets`` transform in
``docutils/transforms/references.py``.

In fact, there are quite a lot of Transforms, which do various useful
things like creating the table of contents, applying substitution
references or resolving auto-numbered footnotes.

The Transforms are applied after parsing.  To see how the node tree
has changed after applying the Transforms, we use the
``rst2pseudoxml.py`` tool:

.. parsed-literal::

    $ rst2pseudoxml.py test.txt
    <document source="test.txt">
        <paragraph>
            My
            <emphasis>
                favorite
             language is
            <reference name="Python" **refuri="http://www.python.org/"**>
                Python
            .
        <target ids="python" names="python" ``refuri="http://www.python.org/"``>

For our small test document, the only change is that the ``refname``
attribute of the reference has been replaced by a ``refuri``
attribute |---| the reference has been resolved.

While this does not look very exciting, transforms are a powerful tool
to apply any kind of transformation on the node tree.

By the way, you can also get a "real" XML representation of the node
tree by using ``rst2xml.py`` instead of ``rst2pseudoxml.py``.


Writing the Document
--------------------

To get an HTML document out of the node tree, we use a **Writer**, the
HTML writer in this case (``docutils/writers/html4css1.py``).

The writer receives the node tree and returns the output document.
For HTML output, we can test this using the ``rst2html.py`` tool::

    $ rst2html.py --link-stylesheet test.txt
    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
    <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
    <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
    <head>
    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
    <meta name="generator" content="Docutils 0.3.10: http://docutils.sourceforge.net/" />
    <title></title>
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="../docutils/writers/html4css1/html4css1.css" type="text/css" />
    </head>
    <body>
    <div class="document">
    <p>My <em>favorite</em> language is <a class="reference" href="http://www.python.org/">Python</a>.</p>
    </div>
    </body>
    </html>

So here we finally have our HTML output.  The actual document contents
are in the fourth-last line.  Note, by the way, that the HTML writer
did not render the (invisible) ``target`` node |---| only the
``paragraph`` node and its children appear in the HTML output.


Extending Docutils
==================

Now you'll ask, "how do I actually extend Docutils?"

First of all, once you are clear about *what* you want to achieve, you
have to decide *where* to implement it |---| in the Parser (e.g. by
adding a directive or role to the reStructuredText parser), as a
Transform, or in the Writer.  There is often one obvious choice among
those three (Parser, Transform, Writer).  If you are unsure, ask on
the Docutils-develop_ mailing list.

In order to find out how to start, it is often helpful to look at
similar features which are already implemented.  For example, if you
want to add a new directive to the reStructuredText parser, look at
the implementation of a similar directive in
``docutils/parsers/rst/directives/``.


Modifying the Document Tree Before It Is Written
------------------------------------------------

You can modify the document tree right before the writer is called.
One possibility is to use the publish_doctree_ and
publish_from_doctree_ functions.

To retrieve the document tree, call::

    document = docutils.core.publish_doctree(...)

Please see the docstring of publish_doctree for a list of parameters.

.. XXX Need to write a well-readable list of (commonly used) options
   of the publish_* functions.  Probably in api/publisher.txt.

``document`` is the root node of the document tree.  You can now
change the document by accessing the ``document`` node and its
children |---| see `The Node Interface`_ below.

When you're done with modifying the document tree, you can write it
out by calling::

    output = docutils.core.publish_from_doctree(document, ...)

.. _publish_doctree: ../api/publisher.html#publish_doctree
.. _publish_from_doctree: ../api/publisher.html#publish_from_doctree


The Node Interface
------------------

As described in the overview above, Docutils' internal representation
of a document is a tree of nodes.  We'll now have a look at the
interface of these nodes.

(To be completed.)


What Now?
=========

This document is not complete.  Many topics could (and should) be
covered here.  To find out with which topics we should write about
first, we are awaiting *your* feedback.  So please ask your questions
on the Docutils-develop_ mailing list.


.. _Docutils-develop: ../user/mailing-lists.html#docutils-develop


.. |---| unicode:: 8212 .. em-dash
   :trim:


..
   Local Variables:
   mode: indented-text
   indent-tabs-mode: nil
   sentence-end-double-space: t
   fill-column: 70
   End: