Welcome
Sphinx makes it easy to create intelligent and beautiful documentation.
Here are some of Sphinx’s major features:
Output formats:
HTML (including Windows HTML Help), LaTeX (for printable
PDF versions), ePub, Texinfo, manual pages, plain text
Extensive cross-references:
semantic markup and automatic links for
functions, classes, citations, glossary terms and similar pieces of
information
Hierarchical structure:
easy definition of a document tree, with automatic
links to siblings, parents and children
Automatic indices:
general index as well as a language-specific module
indices
Code handling:
automatic highlighting using the
Pygments
highlighter
Extensions:
automatic testing of code snippets, inclusion of docstrings
from Python modules (API docs) via
built-in extensions
, and much more functionality via
third-party
extensions
.
Themes:
modify the look and feel of outputs via
creating themes
, and reuse many
third-party themes
.
Contributed extensions:
dozens of extensions
contributed by users
; most of them installable from PyPI.
Sphinx uses the
reStructuredText
markup language by default, and can read
MyST markdown
via third-party extensions. Both of these
are powerful and straightforward to use, and have functionality
for complex documentation and publishing workflows. They both build upon
Docutils
to parse and write documents.
See below for how to navigate Sphinx’s documentation.
Get started
These sections cover the basics of getting started with Sphinx, including
creating and building your own documentation from scratch.
User Guides
These sections cover various topics in using and extending Sphinx for various
use-cases. They are a comprehensive guide to using Sphinx in many contexts and
assume more knowledge of Sphinx. If you are new to Sphinx, we recommend
starting with
Get started
.
Reference guide
Reference documentation is more complete and programmatic in nature, it is a
collection of information that can be quickly referenced. If you would like
usecase-driven documentation, see
Get started
or
User Guides
.