Writing HTML (CSS) Stylesheets for Docutils (http://purl.org/dc/terms/) (../../docutils/writers/html5_polyglot/minimal.css) (../../docutils/writers/html5_polyglot/responsive.css) (../../docutils/writers/html5_polyglot/italic-field-names.css)  (https://docutils.sourceforge.io) Docutils | (../index.html) Overview | (../index.html#project-fundamentals) About | (../index.html#user) Users | (../index.html#ref) Reference | (../index.html#howto) Developers   Writing HTML (CSS) Stylesheets for (https://docutils.sourceforge.io/) Docutils  Author:  Lea Wiemann  Contact:  (mailto:docutils-develop@lists.sourceforge.net) docutils-develop@lists.sourceforge.net  Date:  2024-09-10 Revision:  9923 Copyright:  This document has been placed in the public domain.  The look of Docutils' HTML output is customizable via CSS stylesheets.
The default stylesheets can be found in the docutils/writers/html*/ directories of the html4css1 and html-base  writers in the Docutils installation.  Use the front-end
command (rst2html or rst2html5 ) with the --help  option and look at the description of the --stylesheet-path  command-line option for the exact machine-specific location. To customize the look of HTML documents, you can override the settings
of the default stylesheet in your own stylesheet. Specify both, the
default stylesheet and your stylesheet to the --stylesheet  or --stylesheet-path  command line option (or the corresponding
settings in a (../user/config.rst) configuration file), e.g. rst2html --stylesheet=html4css1.css,transition-stars.css This is the preferable approach if you want to embed the stylesheet(s), as
this ensures that an up-to-date version of html4css1.css is embedded. Alternatively, copy the default style sheet to the same place as your
output HTML files will go and place a new file (e.g. called my-docutils.css  ) in the same directory and use the following
template: /*
:Author: Your Name
:Contact: Your Email Address
:Copyright: This stylesheet has been placed in the public domain.

Stylesheet for use with Docutils.  [Optionally place a more
detailed description here.]
*/

@import url(html4css1.css);

/* Your customizations go here.  For example: */

h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, p.topic-title {
  font-family: sans-serif } For help on the CSS syntax, see, e.g., the (https://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/#specs) W3C Specification , the (http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/css/) WDG's guide to Cascading Style Sheets , or the (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS) MDN Web Docs . It is important that you do not edit a copy of html4css1.css directly because html4css1.css may be updated with a new
release of Docutils. Also make sure that you import html4css1.css (using "@import url(html4css1.css); ") because the definitions contained in the
default stylesheet are required for correct rendering (margins,
alignment, etc.). If you think your stylesheet is fancy and you would like to let others
benefit from your efforts, you are encouraged to post the stylesheet to the (../user/mailing-lists.html#docutils-users) Docutils-users mailing list. It might find its place in the (../../../sandbox/stylesheets/) stylesheet
collection in the Docutils (../../../sandbox) Sandbox . If you decide to share your stylesheet with other users of Docutils,
please keep website-specific customizations not applicable to
Docutils' HTML code in a separate stylesheet.  (html-stylesheets.rst) View document source .
Generated on: 2025-07-11 12:57 UTC.
Generated by (https://docutils.sourceforge.io/) Docutils from (https://docutils.sourceforge.io/rst.html) reStructuredText source.