reStructuredText
Writablemarkup
reStructuredText files are in effect plain text documents, formatted with a lightweight markup language, to produce more easily readable documents such as pdf. Rst files are used primarily by members of the Python programming community to create technical documentation for Python libraries. They are generated by running Docutils (https://docutils.sourceforge.io/), an open source text processing system which can turn plain text files, into useful formats, within Python.
Identify it
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Open it
- DocutilsOpen source
- PandocOpen source
- PandocOpen source
- PygmentsOpen source
- Q1122464Open source
- restructuredtext-lintOpen source
- rst2pdfOpen source
- SphinxOpen source
Convert it
| To | With | Fidelity | Command and losses |
|---|---|---|---|
| ePub Format | Pandoc | Partial | pandoc -f rst -t epub in.rst -o out.epubDocument structure is kept; layout, styles and unsupported elements are lost. |
| Hypertext Markup Language | Pandoc | Partial | pandoc -f rst -t html in.rst -o out.htmlDocument structure is kept; layout, styles and unsupported elements are lost. |
| Markdown | Pandoc | Partial | pandoc -f rst -t markdown in.rst -o out.mdDocument structure is kept; layout, styles and unsupported elements are lost. |
| Office Open XML Wordprocessing Document, ECMA-376 1st Edition | Pandoc | Partial | pandoc -f rst -t docx in.rst -o out.docxDocument structure is kept; layout, styles and unsupported elements are lost. |
| OpenDocument | Pandoc | Partial | pandoc -f rst -t odt in.rst -o out.odtDocument structure is kept; layout, styles and unsupported elements are lost. |
| Plain Text File | Pandoc | Partial | pandoc -f rst -t plain in.rst -o out.txtText only: all formatting is dropped. |
Sources
From Converters (FFmpeg, ImageMagick, Pandoc, LibreOffice), Just Solve the File Format Problem (File Formats Wiki), PRONOM, Wikidata. Updated 2026-10-24.