========================
 The Docutils Publisher
========================

:Author: David Goodger
:Contact: goodger@python.org
:Date: $Date: 2005-06-27 13:25:47 +0200 (Mon, 27 Jun 2005) $
:Revision: $Revision: 3599 $
:Copyright: This document has been placed in the public domain.

.. contents::


Publisher Convenience Functions
===============================

Each of these functions set up a ``docutils.core.Publisher`` object,
then call its ``publish`` method.  ``docutils.core.Publisher.publish``
handles everything else.  There are five convenience functions in the
``docutils.core`` module:

:_`publish_cmdline`: for command-line front-end tools, like
  ``rst2html.py``.  There are several examples in the ``tools/``
  directory.  A detailed analysis of one such tool is in `Inside A
  Docutils Command-Line Front-End Tool`_

:_`publish_file`: for programmatic use with file-like I/O.  In
  addition to writing the encoded output to a file, also returns the
  encoded output as a string.

:_`publish_string`: for programmatic use with string I/O.  Returns
  the encoded output as a string.

:_`publish_parts`: for programmatic use with string input; returns a
  dictionary of document parts.  Dictionary keys are the names of
  parts, and values are Unicode strings; encoding is up to the client.
  Useful when only portions of the processed document are desired.
  See `publish_parts Details`_ below.

  There are usage examples in the `docutils/examples.py`_ module.

:_`publish_programmatically`: for custom programmatic use.  This
  function implements common code and is used by ``publish_file``,
  ``publish_string``, and ``publish_parts``.  It returns a 2-tuple:
  the encoded string output and the Publisher object.

.. _Inside A Docutils Command-Line Front-End Tool: ./cmdline-tool.html
.. _docutils/examples.py: ../../docutils/examples.py


Configuration
-------------

To pass application-specific setting defaults to the Publisher
convenience functions, use the ``settings_overrides`` parameter.  Pass
a dictionary of setting names & values, like this::

    overrides = {'input_encoding': 'ascii',
                 'output_encoding': 'latin-1'}
    output = publish_string(..., settings_overrides=overrides)

Settings from command-line options override configuration file
settings, and they override application defaults.  For details, see
`Docutils Runtime Settings`_.  See `Docutils Configuration Files`_ for
details about individual settings.

.. _Docutils Runtime Settings: ./runtime-settings.html
.. _Docutils Configuration Files: ../user/tools.html


Encodings
---------

The default output encoding of Docutils is UTF-8.  If you have any
non-ASCII in your input text, you may have to do a bit more setup.
Docutils may introduce some non-ASCII text if you use
`auto-symbol footnotes`_ or the `"contents" directive`_.

.. _auto-symbol footnotes:
   ../ref/rst/restructuredtext.html#auto-symbol-footnotes
.. _"contents" directive:
   ../ref/rst/directives.html#table-of-contents


``publish_parts`` Details
=========================

The ``docutils.core.publish_parts`` convenience function returns a
dictionary of document parts.  Dictionary keys are the names of parts,
and values are Unicode strings.

Each Writer component may publish a different set of document parts,
described below.  Currently only the HTML Writer implements more than
the "whole" part.


Parts Provided By All Writers
-----------------------------

_`whole`
    ``parts['whole']`` contains the entire formatted document.


Parts Provided By the HTML Writer
---------------------------------

_`body`
    ``parts['body']`` is equivalent to parts['fragment_'].  It is
    *not* equivalent to parts['html_body_'].

_`docinfo`
    ``parts['docinfo']`` contains the document bibliographic data.

_`footer`
    ``parts['footer']`` contains the document footer content, meant to
    appear at the bottom of a web page, or repeated at the bottom of
    every printed page.

_`fragment`
    ``parts['fragment']`` contains the document body (*not* the HTML
    ``<body>``).  In other words, it contains the entire document,
    less the document title, subtitle, docinfo, header, and footer.

_`header`
    ``parts['header']`` contains the document header content, meant to
    appear at the top of a web page, or repeated at the top of every
    printed page.

_`html_body`
    ``parts['html_body']`` contains the HTML ``<body>`` content, less
    the ``<body>`` and ``</body>`` tags themselves.

_`html_head`
    ``parts['html_head']`` contains the HTML ``<head>`` content, less
    the stylesheet link and the ``<head>`` and ``</head>`` tags
    themselves.  Since ``publish_parts`` returns Unicode strings and
    does not know about the output encoding, the "Content-Type" meta
    tag's "charset" value is left unresolved, as "%s"::

        <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=%s" />

    The interpolation should be done by client code.

_`html_prolog`
    ``parts['html_prolog]`` contains the XML declaration and the
    doctype declaration.  The XML declaration's "encoding" attribute's
    value is left unresolved, as "%s"::

        <?xml version="1.0" encoding="%s" ?>

    The interpolation should be done by client code.

_`html_subtitle`
    ``parts['html_subtitle']`` contains the document subtitle,
    including the enclosing ``<h2 class="subtitle">`` & ``</h2>``
    tags.

_`html_title`
    ``parts['html_title']`` contains the document title, including the
    enclosing ``<h1 class="title">`` & ``</h1>`` tags.

_`meta`
    ``parts['meta']`` contains all ``<meta ... />`` tags.

_`stylesheet`
    ``parts['stylesheet']`` contains the document stylesheet link.

_`subtitle`
    ``parts['subtitle']`` contains the document subtitle text and any
    inline markup.  It does not include the enclosing ``<h2>`` &
    ``</h2>`` tags.

_`title`
    ``parts['title']`` contains the document title text and any inline
    markup.  It does not include the enclosing ``<h1>`` & ``</h1>``
    tags.
