FAQ#

1.  How-tos#

These sections describe some common scenarios and use-cases for writing MyST with Sphinx.

1.1.  Include rST files into a Markdown file#

As explained in this section, all MyST directives will parse their content as Markdown. Therefore, using the conventional include directive, will parse the file contents as Markdown:

```{include} snippets/include-md.md
```

Hallo I’m from a Markdown file, with a reference.

To include rST, we must first “wrap” the directive in the eval-rst directive:

```{eval-rst}
.. include:: snippets/include-rst.rst
```

Hallo I’m from an rST file, with a reference.

1.2.  Include Markdown files into an rST file#

To include a MyST file within a ReStructuredText file, we can use the parser option of the include directive:

.. include:: include.md
   :parser: myst_parser.sphinx_

Important

The parser option requires docutils>=0.17

1.3.  Use MyST in Jupyter Notebooks#

The MyST-NB tool provides a Sphinx extension for parsing Jupyter Notebooks written with MyST Markdown. It includes features like automatically executing notebooks during documentation builds, storing notebook cell outputs in order to insert them elsewhere in your documentation, and more. See the MyST-NB documentation for more information.

1.4.  Include a file from outside the docs folder (like README.md)#

You can include a file, including one from outside the project using e.g.:

```{include} ../README.md
```

However, including a file will not usually resolve local links correctly, like ![](my-image.png), since it treats the text as if it originated from the “including file”.

As of myst-parser version 0.12.7, a new, experimental feature has been added to resolve such links. You can now use for example:

Source:
```{literalinclude} ../../example.md
:language: md
```
Included:
```{include} ../../example.md
:relative-docs: docs/
:relative-images:
```

Source:

[Used in how-to](docs/faq/index.md)
![alt](docs/_static/logo-wide.svg)

Included:

Used in how-to alt

The include here attempts to re-write local links, to reference them from the correct location! The relative-docs must be given the prefix of any links to re-write, to distinguish them from sphinx cross-references.

Important

The current functionality only works for Markdown style images and links.

If you encounter any issues with this feature, please don’t hesitate to report it.

1.5.  Use sphinx.ext.autodoc in Markdown files#

See Documenting whole APIs for this information.

1.6.  Automatically create targets for section headers#

New in version 0.13.0: See Implicit targets for this information.

1.7.  Suppress warnings#

See Build Warnings for this information.

1.8.  Sphinx-specific page front matter#

Sphinx intercepts front matter and stores them within the global environment (as discussed in the sphinx documentation). There are certain front-matter keys (or their translations) that are also recognised specifically by docutils and parsed to inline Markdown:

  • author

  • authors

  • organization

  • address

  • contact

  • version

  • revision

  • status

  • date

  • copyright

  • dedication

  • abstract

A classic use-case is to specify ‘orphan’ documents, that are not specified in any toctrees. For example, inserting the following syntax at the top of a page will cause Sphinx to treat it as an orphan page:

---
orphan: true
---

This is an orphan document, not specified in any toctrees.

1.9.  Migrate pre-existing rST into MyST#

If you’ve already got some reStructuredText files that you’d like to convert into MyST Markdown, try the rst-to-myst tool, which allows you to convert single rST files to MyST markdown documents.

2.  Disable Markdown syntax for the parser#

If you’d like to either enable or disable custom markdown syntax, use myst_disable_syntax. Anything in this list will no longer be parsed by the MyST parser.

For example, to disable the emphasis in-line syntax, use this configuration:

myst_disable_syntax = ["emphasis"]

emphasis syntax will now be disabled. For example, the following will be rendered without any italics:

*emphasis is now disabled*

For a list of all the syntax elements you can disable, see the markdown-it parser guide.

3.  Common errors and questions#

These are common issues and gotchas that people may experience when using the MyST Sphinx extension.

3.1.  What markup language should I use inside directives?#

If you need to parse content inside of another block of content (for example, the content inside a note directive), note that the MyST parser will be used for this nested parsing as well.