如何在Windows中使用Sphinx创建PDF文档

Question

I am using Sphinx to create documentation for my Python project in Windows. I need to generate PDF documentation. I found many explanation how to do this in Linux, but no good explanation how to do this in Windows. As far as i understand I need to create Latex format with Sphinx, and than use Texworks to convert Latex to PDF. Can someone provide step by step explanation how can I do this, assuming I created documentation in Latex format and installed Texworks?

Answer 1

Install MiKTeX (< 200mb)

wget -nv -N http://mirrors.ctan.org/systems/win32/miktex/setup/miktex-portable-2.9.4757.exe
7z.exe x -y miktex-portable-2.9.4757.exe -o"miktex"

Add the bin directory to your path

SET Path=%Path%;%CD%\miktex\miktex\bin

Run Sphinx's "make.bat" to generate the .tex file.

SET SPHINXOPTS=-W -E
make.bat latex

Invoke MiKTeX's pdflatex:

cd build/latex
pdflatex.exe YOUR_PROJECT_NAME.tex

The resultant PDF will be in your build/latex directory

Answer 2

Install the full tex live distribution, it will install latex, PDF backends and texworks. Yes it is much, yes, it will dl and install for a fat hour depending on your pipe. But it will be sub gig total, and harddisks are large nowadays.

From what I see, Texworks is just a simple LaTeX editor with some build functionality and latex syntax highlighting. It is not really needed for just compiling (you could use notepad)

Then it should be a matter of simply putting the tex live binary directory i the path and doing

    pdflatex <yourlatexdocument.tex>

on the cmdline, at least that is what I do with the latex output of our own documentation generating tool

Answer 3

As you have figured out: use Sphinx to generate LaTeX source, and then run it through a LaTex compiler to produce your PDF.

Instead of troubling yourself with installing LaTeX (which can be daunting) and getting an editor set up, I suggest that you use one of the on-line LaTeX services. You then only have to create a project in ShareLaTeX or Overleaf, for example (which are in the process of merging), upload the contents of the Sphinx build\\latex directory, compile on-line, and download the finished PDF.

This works reasonably well, but since the output targets are very different (HTML vs a formal document), you may have to fiddle with the reST to get things the way you like it.