Make reStructuredText by LeXtudio (RTL) working

Below is a process of installing RTL in Windows.

  1. Prerequisites:

    • VS Code installed

    • Docs files from docs repo on Github were pulled to the working directory

    • You are familiar with recommended official videos VS Code

  1. Check that Python is installed on your machine. ⊞ Win + cmd and then print

    py --version

    your version should be higher than 3.8.0. If you have no Python and never installed Python before, check our help here. If Python is missed or the version is old you should get it from official source. It is recommended to add python.exe to the path – see checkbox on the initial screen before installation. In the end it is recommended to disable path limit. After installation is complete, reload VS Code to let the path to Python scripts updates.

  2. In VS Code press ⌃ Control + ⇧ Shift + X to open extension marketplace, find Python by Microsoft and install.

    • In case of multiple Python installations choose the correct one by ⌃ Control + ⇧ Shift + P and command Python: Select Interpreter

  3. In VS Code press ⌃ Control + ⇧ Shift + ` to start terminal

    Tip

    ` - ticks are typically below ~ and to left from 1 on the keyboard

    Then to install sphinx, blue-white RTD theme, sphinx-copybutton, other packages, mentioned in ./docs/requirements.txt, and language server esbonio print the following command:

    pip install -r requirements.txt esbonio

Caution

For correct work RTL requires some additional dependencies – esbonio and reStructuredText Syntax highlighting, that will be prompted to you during installation of RTL, so be careful and agree to install them and later install esbonio server.

  1. In VS Code extension market find reStructuredText and press install. Follow prompts to install dependencies and run them.

Congrat!

Now you can use preview button preview_ico in VS Code on .rst files.