
Miscellaneous markup
********************


File-wide metadata
==================

reST has the concept of "field lists"; these are a sequence of fields
marked up like this:

   :fieldname: Field content

A field list near the top of a file is parsed by docutils as the
"docinfo" which is normally used to record the author, date of
publication and other metadata.  *In Sphinx*, a field list preceding
any other markup is moved from the docinfo to the Sphinx environment
as document metadata and is not displayed in the output; a field list
appearing after the document title will be part of the docinfo as
normal and will be displayed in the output.

At the moment, these metadata fields are recognized:

``tocdepth``
   The maximum depth for a table of contents of this file.

   New in version 0.4.

``nocomments``
   If set, the web application won't display a comment form for a page
   generated from this source file.

``orphan``
   If set, warnings about this file not being included in any toctree
   will be suppressed.

   New in version 1.0.


Meta-information markup
=======================

.. sectionauthor:: name <email>

   Identifies the author of the current section.  The argument should
   include the author's name such that it can be used for presentation
   and email address.  The domain name portion of the address should
   be lower case. Example:

      .. sectionauthor:: Guido van Rossum <guido@python.org>

   By default, this markup isn't reflected in the output in any way
   (it helps keep track of contributions), but you can set the
   configuration value ``show_authors`` to True to make them produce a
   paragraph in the output.

.. codeauthor:: name <email>

   The ``codeauthor`` directive, which can appear multiple times,
   names the authors of the described code, just like
   ``sectionauthor`` names the author(s) of a piece of documentation.
   It too only produces output if the ``show_authors`` configuration
   value is True.


Including content based on tags
===============================

.. only:: <expression>

   Include the content of the directive only if the *expression* is
   true.  The expression should consist of tags, like this:

      .. only:: html and draft

   Undefined tags are false, defined tags (via the ``-t`` command-line
   option or within ``conf.py``) are true.  Boolean expressions, also
   using parentheses (like ``html and (latex or draft)``) are
   supported.

   The format of the current builder (``html``, ``latex`` or ``text``)
   is always set as a tag.

   New in version 0.6.


Tables
======

Use *standard reStructuredText tables*.  They work fine in HTML
output, however there are some gotchas when using tables in LaTeX: the
column width is hard to determine correctly automatically.  For this
reason, the following directive exists:

.. tabularcolumns:: column spec

   This directive gives a "column spec" for the next table occurring
   in the source file.  The spec is the second argument to the LaTeX
   ``tabulary`` package's environment (which Sphinx uses to translate
   tables).  It can have values like

      |l|l|l|

   which means three left-adjusted, nonbreaking columns.  For columns
   with longer text that should automatically be broken, use either
   the standard ``p{width}`` construct, or tabulary's automatic
   specifiers:

   +-------+--------------------------------------------+
   | ``L`` | ragged-left column with automatic width    |
   +-------+--------------------------------------------+
   | ``R`` | ragged-right column with automatic width   |
   +-------+--------------------------------------------+
   | ``C`` | centered column with automatic width       |
   +-------+--------------------------------------------+
   | ``J`` | justified column with automatic width      |
   +-------+--------------------------------------------+

   The automatic width is determined by rendering the content in the
   table, and scaling them according to their share of the total
   width.

   By default, Sphinx uses a table layout with ``L`` for every column.

   New in version 0.3.

Warning: Tables that contain list-like elements such as object descriptions,
  blockquotes or any kind of lists cannot be set out of the box with
  ``tabulary``.  They are therefore set with the standard LaTeX
  ``tabular`` environment if you don't give a ``tabularcolumns``
  directive.  If you do, the table will be set with ``tabulary``, but
  you must use the ``p{width}`` construct for the columns that contain
  these elements.Literal blocks do not work with ``tabulary`` at all,
  so tables containing a literal block are always set with
  ``tabular``.  Also, the verbatim environment used for literal blocks
  only works in ``p{width}`` columns, which means that by default,
  Sphinx generates such column specs for such tables. Use the
  ``tabularcolumns`` directive to get finer control over such tables.
