Use Sphinx to generate standalone HTML files

Question

I'm quite new to Sphinx and I'm trying to create the docs for my application. It would be nice to generate a "standalone" HTML file for each topic.

I mean: Sphinx creates a useful navigation panel on the left, with some modules (toc, next topic, search, etc..). But this is placed in every HTML!

I would like to add a contextual help inside my application: whenever the user set the focus on a (relevant) widget, the related HTML is shown in a box. Of course I don't want to show the navigation panel here!

Is is possible to configure Sphinx to generate HTML files that contains ONLY the topic's content, then use a main html (index.html) to display them in a frame?

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 08 '17 at 19:28

2

The default HTML output (when using the html builder) includes a sidebar (navigation pane) for most themes, usually on the left hand side.

There are other output formats, such as HTML Help and Qt Help, with builders that produce HTML files without the sidebar. Use one of those.

The documentation for these builders says "this builder produces the same output as the standalone HTML builder...", but that is misleading IMHO. The output is not the same.

answered Oct 08 '17 at 19:28

mzjn

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Actually they generate *also* the same output, then they add a "HTML Help/Qt help support files that allow the Microsoft HTML Help Workshop/Qt collection generator to compile them [...]" – Mark Oct 09 '17 at 05:00

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 28 '19 at 15:32

2

This is what worked for me: https://stackoverflow.com/a/53212488/2636544, i.e. add following to conf.py:

html_theme_options = {
    # Disable showing the sidebar. Defaults to 'false'
    'nosidebar': True,
}

Works for alabaster theme.

answered Jun 28 '19 at 15:32

Wes

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Use Sphinx to generate standalone HTML files

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