Usage¶
Install nbsphinx
with
pip:
pip install nbsphinx --user
If you change your mind, you can un-install it with:
pip uninstall nbsphinx
Sphinx Setup¶
In the directory with your notebook files, run this command (assuming you have Sphinx installed already):
sphinx-quickstart
Answer the questions that appear on the screen. In case of doubt, just
press the <Return>
key to take the default values.
After that, there will be a few brand-new files in the current directory. You’ll have to make a few changes to the file named conf.py. You should at least check if those two variables contain the right things:
extensions = [
'nbsphinx',
'sphinx.ext.mathjax',
]
exclude_patterns = ['_build', '**.ipynb_checkpoints']
Once your conf.py
is in place, edit the file named
index.rst and add the file names of your notebooks
(without the .ipynb
extension) to the toctree
directive.
Running Sphinx¶
To create the HTML pages, use this command:
sphinx-build <source-dir> <build-dir>
If you have many notebooks, you can do a parallel build by using the
-j
option:
sphinx-build <source-dir> <build-dir> -j<number-of-processes>
For example, if your source files are in the current directory and you have 4 CPU cores, you can run this:
sphinx-build . _build -j4
Afterwards, you can find the main HTML file in _build/index.html
.
To create LaTeX output, use:
sphinx-build <source-dir> <build-dir> -b latex
Subsequent builds will be faster, because only those source files which
have changed will be re-built. To force re-building all source files,
use the -E
option.
Automatic Creation of HTML and PDF output on readthedocs.org¶
This is very easy!
Create an account on https://readthedocs.org/ and add your Github/Bitbucket repository (or any publicly available Git/Subversion/Mercurial/Bazaar repository).
Create a file named requirements.txt (or whatever name you wish) in your repository containing the required pip packages:
nbsphinx ipykernel
In the “Advanced Settings” on readthedocs.org, specify your
requirements.txt
file (or however you called it) in the box labelled “Requirements file”. Kinda obvious, isn’t it?Still in the “Advanced Settings”, make sure the right Python interpreter is chosen. This must be the same version (2.x or 3.x) as you were using in your notebooks!
Make sure that in the “Settings” of your Github repository, under “Webhooks & services”, “ReadTheDocs” is listed and activated in the “Services” section. If not, use “Add service”. There is probably a similar thing for Bitbucket.
Done!
After that, you only have to “push” to your repository and the HTML pages and the PDF file of your stuff are automagically created on readthedocs.org. Awesome!
You can even have different versions of your stuff, just use Git tags and branches and select in the readthedocs.org settings (under “Admin”, “Versions”) which of those should be created.
HTML Themes¶
The nbsphinx
extension does not provide its own theme, you can use
any of the available themes or create a custom one, if you feel like it.
Here are a few examples how the nbsphinx
input and output cells look
like in different themes:
http://nbsphinx.readthedocs.org/en/readthedocs-theme/
http://nbsphinx.readthedocs.org/en/alabaster-theme/
http://nbsphinx.readthedocs.org/en/bootstrap-theme/