.. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
.. International License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
.. Copyright 2017 AT&T Intellectual Property.  All rights reserved.

.. _converting-to-rst:

Converting to RST
=================

Installing pandoc
-----------------

Pandoc is a powerful document-transformation utility. We'll use it to
do simple conversions, but it is capable of much more. Visit
the `pandoc website <http://pandoc.org/installing.html>`_ for
installation instructions for your platform.

Converting
----------

Using a terminal, navigate to the directory containing the documents
you wish to convert. Next, issue the following command for each file
you'd like to convert:

:code:`pandoc -s --toc -f <from format> -t rst myfile.<from format>`

:code:`-s` tells pandoc to produce a standalone document

:code:`--toc` tells pandoc to produce a table of contents (optional)

:code:`-t` tells pandoc to produce reStructuredText output

:code:`-f` tells pandoc the input format. It should be one of the following:

+--------------------+---------------------------------------------------------------+
| Format             | Description                                                   |
+====================+===============================================================+
|commonmark          | Markdown variant                                              |
+--------------------+---------------------------------------------------------------+
|docbook             | XML-based markup                                              |
+--------------------+---------------------------------------------------------------+
|docx                | Microsoft Word                                                |
+--------------------+---------------------------------------------------------------+
|epub                | Ebook format                                                  |
+--------------------+---------------------------------------------------------------+
|haddock             | Doc format produced by tool used on Haskell code              |
+--------------------+---------------------------------------------------------------+
|html                | HTML                                                          |
+--------------------+---------------------------------------------------------------+
|json                | JSON pandoc AST                                               |
+--------------------+---------------------------------------------------------------+
|latex               | Older typesetting syntax                                      |
+--------------------+---------------------------------------------------------------+
|markdown            | Simple formatting syntax meant to produce HTML                |
+--------------------+---------------------------------------------------------------+
|markdown_github     | Github flavored markdown                                      |
+--------------------+---------------------------------------------------------------+
|markdown_mmd        | Multi-markdown flavored markdown                              |
+--------------------+---------------------------------------------------------------+
|markdown_phpextra   | PHP flavored markdown                                         |
+--------------------+---------------------------------------------------------------+
|markdown_strict     | Markdown with no added pandoc features                        |
+--------------------+---------------------------------------------------------------+
|mediawiki           | Popular wiki language                                         |
+--------------------+---------------------------------------------------------------+
|native              | Pandoc native Haskell                                         |
+--------------------+---------------------------------------------------------------+
|odt                 | Open document text (used by LibreOffice)                      |
+--------------------+---------------------------------------------------------------+
|opml                | Outline processor markup language                             |
+--------------------+---------------------------------------------------------------+
|org                 | Org mode for Emacs                                            |
+--------------------+---------------------------------------------------------------+
|rst                 | reStructuredText                                              |
+--------------------+---------------------------------------------------------------+
|t2t                 | Wiki-like formatting syntax                                   |
+--------------------+---------------------------------------------------------------+
|textile             | A formatting syntax similar to RST and markdown               |
+--------------------+---------------------------------------------------------------+
|twiki               | Popular wiki formatting syntax                                |
+--------------------+---------------------------------------------------------------+

Fixing the converted document
-----------------------------

How much you'll need to fix the converted document depends on which file
format you're converting from. Here are a couple of things to watch out
for:

1. Multi-line titles need to be converted to single line
2. Standalone "**" characters
3. :code:`***bolded***` should be :code:`**bolded**`
4. Mangled tables

Previewing edits
----------------

Web-based
~~~~~~~~~

`rst.ninjs.org <http://rst.ninjs.org>`_ has an excellent RST previewing
tool that highlights RST errors with line numbers.