In the HTML output generated by rst2html, sections at all levels are all with class "section", can I config it?

Question

In the HTML output generated by rst2html, sections at all levels are all with class "section". Can I config it?

Thus, if I want apply my own CSS to the HTML output, I just can not use different styles for top-level section and sub-section, because they have the same class name?

How to solve this problem if I want to apply different styles to sections at different level?

Answer 1

I have solved this problem by writing my own rst writer class Inheriting docutils.writers.html4css1.Writer, and in its constructor, assign it a instance of class HTMLTranslator Inheriting docutils.writers.html4css1.HTMLTranslator to its translator_class attribute.

Specifically， in my HTMLTranslator class, the method visit_section is overridden::

def visit_section(self, node):
    self.section_level += 1
    self.body.append(
        self.starttag(node, 'div', CLASS='section section%d' % self.section_level))

Thus, section at level 2 will get a class section section2.

Answer 2

You might give a try to class directive. This is an HTML-specific directive and it allows setting an arbitrary class to the elements that follow it. The full description is here: http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/ref/rst/directives.html#class

Here is an example:

Regular header
==============

.. class:: myclass

Section with a class myclass
****************************

Regular paragraph