About reStructuredText

reStructuredText (or reST, or RST) is the markup language that drives the Docutils project. The Docutils project covers much more than simple Text -> HTML conversion, and aims to decouple the reST parser and the output generators allowing you to write reST and generate various types of output. In our case, of course, we're concerned with the conversion of reST -> HTML.

There is already a ton of great documentation on reST but we're looking at getting a nice quick start here, right? Well, if you want to go a little bit further than minimal and have a look at the the reST site, have a gander at the Quick reStructuredText page or even the reST Primer. That gives a really nice listing of what you need to type in order to achieve the given output.

Assuming you skipped that, here's some examples of the simple stuff. If you know Markdown or anything of that type, then this won't be news to you. The nice thing is that transition to reST from Markdown is pretty simple.

Paragraphs are simple -- just make them look like paragraphs. If you want to make something bold then it's easy, and italics are even easier. There are many times when I want to do something in a mono-spaced font and that's pretty simple too. If you install Pygments you can even do some excellent stuff with inline source code, like this:

You can also
do
nifty little <pre>
sections
easily
as
well

Paragraphs are simple -- just make them look like paragraphs.
If you want to make something **bold** then it's easy, and
*italics* are even easier.  There are many times when I want
to do something in a ``mono-spaced font`` and that's pretty
simple too.  If you install Pygments you can even do some
excellent stuff with inline source code, like this:

.. sourcecode:: bash

  function somefunction
  {
    echo "Hi, this is a function.  Isn't that special?"
  }


Section Headers are Easy
------------------------

::

  You can also
  do
  nifty little <pre>
  sections
  easily
  as
  well


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Tables with columns
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and    rows and
other  fun  stuff
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