Sphinx + GitHub + ReadtheDocs 创建电子书

Read the Docs是一个在线文档托管服务， 你可以从各种版本控制系统中导入文档。一般来讲，这个非常适合写软件文档以及编写一些教程、电子书之类。

Sphinx

Sphinx 是一个基于 Python 的文档生成项目，最早只是用来生成 Python 官方文档，随着工具的完善， 越来越多的知名的项目也用他来生成文档，甚至完全可以用他来写书采用了 reStructuredText 作为文档写作语言, 不过也可以通过模块支持其他格式。

安装Sphinx

pip install sphinx sphinx-autobuild sphinx_rtd_theme

初始化

# 创建文档根目录
mkdir -p /root/work/scrapy-cookbook
cd scrapy-cookbook/
# 可以回车按默认配置来写
sphinx-quickstart

初始化时基本选择默认的即可,有几点需要注意的:

> Separate source and build directories (y/n) [n]:y
> Project name: scrapy-cookbook
> Author name(s): Name
> Project version []: 1.0
> Project release [1.0]: 1.0
> Project language [en]: zh_CN

添加一篇文章

新建 hello.rst，内容如下:

hello,world
=============

ndex.rst 修改如下:

Contents:
.. toctree::
   :maxdepth: 2

   hello

注意，空行。

更改主题 sphinx_rtd_theme

更改 conf.py:

import sphinx_rtd_theme
html_theme = "sphinx_rtd_theme"
html_theme_path = [sphinx_rtd_theme.get_html_theme_path()]

预览效果

然后在更目录执行 make html，进入 build/html 目录后用浏览器打开index.html。

支持 markdown 编写

通过 recommonmark 来支持 markdown

pip install recommonmark

然后更改 conf.py:

from recommonmark.parser import CommonMarkParser
source_parsers = {
    '.md': CommonMarkParser,
}
source_suffix = ['.rst', '.md']

AutoStructify

如果想使用高级功能，可以添加 AutoStructify 配置，在 conf.py 中添加:

# At top on conf.py (with other import statements)
import recommonmark
from recommonmark.transform import AutoStructify

# At the bottom of conf.py
def setup(app):
    app.add_config_value('recommonmark_config', {
            'url_resolver': lambda url: github_doc_root + url,
            'auto_toc_tree_section': 'Contents',
            }, True)
    app.add_transform(AutoStructify)

可以直接使用下面的配置：

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
#
# Recommonmark documentation build configuration file, created by
# sphinx-quickstart on Tue Jul 28 11:17:27 2015.
#
# This file is execfile()d with the current directory set to its
# containing dir.
#
# Note that not all possible configuration values are present in this
# autogenerated file.
#
# All configuration values have a default; values that are commented out
# serve to show the default.

import sys
import os
import shlex

# If extensions (or modules to document with autodoc) are in another directory,
# add these directories to sys.path here. If the directory is relative to the
# documentation root, use os.path.abspath to make it absolute, like shown here.
sys.path.insert(0, os.path.abspath('..'))
import recommonmark
from recommonmark.transform import AutoStructify


source_suffix = ['.rst', '.md']

# -- General configuration ------------------------------------------------

# If your documentation needs a minimal Sphinx version, state it here.
#needs_sphinx = '1.0'

# Add any Sphinx extension module names here, as strings. They can be
# extensions coming with Sphinx (named 'sphinx.ext.*') or your custom
# ones.
extensions = [
    'sphinx.ext.autodoc',
    'sphinx.ext.napoleon',
    'sphinx.ext.mathjax',
    'recommonmark',
]

# Add any paths that contain templates here, relative to this directory.
templates_path = ['_templates']

# The encoding of source files.
#source_encoding = 'utf-8-sig'

# The master toctree document.
master_doc = 'index'

# General information about the project.
project = u'Recommonmark'
copyright = u'2015, Luca Barbato, Eric Holscher, and contributors'
author = u'Luca Barbato, Eric Holscher, and contributors'

github_doc_root = 'https://github.com/rtfd/recommonmark/tree/master/docs/'

# The version info for the project you're documenting, acts as replacement for
# |version| and |release|, also used in various other places throughout the
# built documents.
#
# The short X.Y version.
version = recommonmark.__version__
# The full version, including alpha/beta/rc tagss
release = recommonmark.__version__

# The language for content autogenerated by Sphinx. Refer to documentation
# for a list of supported languages.
#
# This is also used if you do content translation via gettext catalogs.
# Usually you set "language" from the command line for these cases.
language = None

# There are two options for replacing |today|: either, you set today to some
# non-false value, then it is used:
#today = ''
# Else, today_fmt is used as the format for a strftime call.
#today_fmt = '%B %d, %Y'

# List of patterns, relative to source directory, that match files and
# directories to ignore when looking for source files.
exclude_patterns = ['_build']

# The reST default role (used for this markup: `text`) to use for all
# documents.
default_role = None

# If true, '()' will be appended to :func: etc. cross-reference text.
#add_function_parentheses = True

# If true, the current module name will be prepended to all description
# unit titles (such as .. function::).
#add_module_names = True

# If true, sectionauthor and moduleauthor directives will be shown in the
# output. They are ignored by default.
#show_authors = False

# The name of the Pygments (syntax highlighting) style to use.
pygments_style = 'sphinx'

# A list of ignored prefixes for module index sorting.
#modindex_common_prefix = []

# If true, keep warnings as "system message" paragraphs in the built documents.
#keep_warnings = False

# If true, `todo` and `todoList` produce output, else they produce nothing.
todo_include_todos = False


# -- Options for HTML output ----------------------------------------------

# The theme to use for HTML and HTML Help pages.  See the documentation for
# a list of builtin themes.
html_theme = 'sphinx_rtd_theme'

# Theme options are theme-specific and customize the look and feel of a theme
# further.  For a list of options available for each theme, see the
# documentation.
#html_theme_options = {}

# Add any paths that contain custom themes here, relative to this directory.
#html_theme_path = []

# The name for this set of Sphinx documents.  If None, it defaults to
# "<project> v<release> documentation".
#html_title = None

# A shorter title for the navigation bar.  Default is the same as html_title.
#html_short_title = None

# The name of an image file (relative to this directory) to place at the top
# of the sidebar.
#html_logo = None

# The name of an image file (within the static path) to use as favicon of the
# docs.  This file should be a Windows icon file (.ico) being 16x16 or 32x32
# pixels large.
#html_favicon = None

# Add any paths that contain custom static files (such as style sheets) here,
# relative to this directory. They are copied after the builtin static files,
# so a file named "default.css" will overwrite the builtin "default.css".
html_static_path = ['_static']

# Add any extra paths that contain custom files (such as robots.txt or
# .htaccess) here, relative to this directory. These files are copied
# directly to the root of the documentation.
#html_extra_path = []

# If not '', a 'Last updated on:' timestamp is inserted at every page bottom,
# using the given strftime format.
#html_last_updated_fmt = '%b %d, %Y'

# If true, SmartyPants will be used to convert quotes and dashes to
# typographically correct entities.
#html_use_smartypants = True

# Custom sidebar templates, maps document names to template names.
#html_sidebars = {}

# Additional templates that should be rendered to pages, maps page names to
# template names.
#html_additional_pages = {}

# If false, no module index is generated.
#html_domain_indices = True

# If false, no index is generated.
#html_use_index = True

# If true, the index is split into individual pages for each letter.
#html_split_index = False

# If true, links to the reST sources are added to the pages.
#html_show_sourcelink = True

# If true, "Created using Sphinx" is shown in the HTML footer. Default is True.
#html_show_sphinx = True

# If true, "(C) Copyright ..." is shown in the HTML footer. Default is True.
#html_show_copyright = True

# If true, an OpenSearch description file will be output, and all pages will
# contain a <link> tag referring to it.  The value of this option must be the
# base URL from which the finished HTML is served.
#html_use_opensearch = ''

# This is the file name suffix for HTML files (e.g. ".xhtml").
#html_file_suffix = None

# Language to be used for generating the HTML full-text search index.
# Sphinx supports the following languages:
#   'da', 'de', 'en', 'es', 'fi', 'fr', 'hu', 'it', 'ja'
#   'nl', 'no', 'pt', 'ro', 'ru', 'sv', 'tr'
#html_search_language = 'en'

# A dictionary with options for the search language support, empty by default.
# Now only 'ja' uses this config value
#html_search_options = {'type': 'default'}

# The name of a javascript file (relative to the configuration directory) that
# implements a search results scorer. If empty, the default will be used.
#html_search_scorer = 'scorer.js'

# Output file base name for HTML help builder.
htmlhelp_basename = 'Recommonmarkdoc'

# -- Options for LaTeX output ---------------------------------------------

latex_elements = {
# The paper size ('letterpaper' or 'a4paper').
#'papersize': 'letterpaper',

# The font size ('10pt', '11pt' or '12pt').
#'pointsize': '10pt',

# Additional stuff for the LaTeX preamble.
#'preamble': '',

# Latex figure (float) alignment
#'figure_align': 'htbp',
}

# Grouping the document tree into LaTeX files. List of tuples
# (source start file, target name, title,
#  author, documentclass [howto, manual, or own class]).
latex_documents = [
  (master_doc, 'Recommonmark.tex', u'Recommonmark Documentation',
   u'Lu Zero, Eric Holscher, and contributors', 'manual'),
]

# The name of an image file (relative to this directory) to place at the top of
# the title page.
#latex_logo = None

# For "manual" documents, if this is true, then toplevel headings are parts,
# not chapters.
#latex_use_parts = False

# If true, show page references after internal links.
#latex_show_pagerefs = False

# If true, show URL addresses after external links.
#latex_show_urls = False

# Documents to append as an appendix to all manuals.
#latex_appendices = []

# If false, no module index is generated.
#latex_domain_indices = True


# -- Options for manual page output ---------------------------------------

# One entry per manual page. List of tuples
# (source start file, name, description, authors, manual section).
man_pages = [
    (master_doc, 'recommonmark', u'Recommonmark Documentation',
     [author], 1)
]

# If true, show URL addresses after external links.
#man_show_urls = False


# -- Options for Texinfo output -------------------------------------------

# Grouping the document tree into Texinfo files. List of tuples
# (source start file, target name, title, author,
#  dir menu entry, description, category)
texinfo_documents = [
  (master_doc, 'Recommonmark', u'Recommonmark Documentation',
   author, 'Recommonmark', 'One line description of project.',
   'Miscellaneous'),
]

# Documents to append as an appendix to all manuals.
#texinfo_appendices = []

# If false, no module index is generated.
#texinfo_domain_indices = True

# How to display URL addresses: 'footnote', 'no', or 'inline'.
#texinfo_show_urls = 'footnote'

# If true, do not generate a @detailmenu in the "Top" node's menu.
#texinfo_no_detailmenu = False

# app setup hook
def setup(app):
    app.add_config_value('recommonmark_config', {
        #'url_resolver': lambda url: github_doc_root + url,
        'auto_toc_tree_section': 'Contents',
        'enable_math': False,
        'enable_inline_math': False,
        'enable_eval_rst': True,
        'enable_auto_doc_ref': True,
    }, True)
    app.add_transform(AutoStructify)

为了正常显示表格：

pandoc -s -t rst --toc newpage.md -o newpage.rst

GitHub 托管

一般的做法是将文档托管到版本控制系统比如 github上面，push 源码后自动构建发布到 readthedoc上面， 这样既有版本控制好处，又能自动发布到 readthedoc，实在是太方便了。
具体几个步骤非常简单，参考官方文档：https://github.com/rtfd/readthedocs.org:

• 在 Read the Docs上面注册一个账号
• 登陆后点击 “Import”.
• 给该文档项目填写一个名字比如 “scrapy-cookbook”, 并添加你在 GitHub 上面的工程 HTTPS 链接, 选择仓库类型为 Git
• 其他项目根据自己的需要填写后点击 “Create”，创建完后会自动去激活 Webhooks，不用再去GitHub设置
• 一切搞定，从此只要你往这个仓库 push 代码，readthedoc上面的文档就会自动更新.