Mastering IPython 4.0

reStructuredText

One could say a lot of things about the preceding example (in particular, that there are more lines of comments than code), but it would be difficult to say that the end result is aesthetically pleasing. In particular, compared to the output of a program using Javadoc, this documentation looks rather plain. In order to remedy this shortcoming, it was decided that a more sophisticated way of specifying and generating documentation was needed.

History and goals

Jim Fulton of Zope invented StructuredText as a simple markup language. It is similar to WikiWikiWebMarkup but simpler. Problems with both the specification and the implementation led to David Goodger creating a revised version, called reStructuredText. His goals for the language ...