---
author: ''
category: ''
date: 2008/09/04 11:08
description: ''
link: ''
priority: ''
slug: BB749
tags: programming, python, rst2pdf
title: 'rst2pdf: What will be new tomorrow'
type: text
updated: 2008/09/04 11:08
url_type: ''
---
Keeping with my new time-based release schedule, tomorrow is again rst2pdf release day! What will be new in 0.7? Several things!

* Fixed several serious bugs, specially with the handling of literal blocks (preformatteds and code blocks).

* Implemented a rather neat sidebar/floating block mechanism. It only lets you go float-left or float-right but it looks better than what you get in HTML, at least:

.. raw:: html

   <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/ralsina/2823059539/" title="sidebar-beige by ralsina_2000, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3029/2823059539_f0ab83a612_o.png" width="889" height="731" alt="sidebar-beige"></a>

You can even use it to float *almost* arbitrary objects, so you can have floating images or floating figures.

* Fixed the look of hyperlinks. Reportlab had a bug about making *some* hyperlinks underlined, and those with a black **thick** underline. Not when you use rst2pdf! Monkey-patched the heck out of that.

* Table styling. Let me show you:

.. raw:: html

   <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/ralsina/2827295341/" title="rst2pdf-tablestyles by ralsina_2000, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3210/2827295341_27d3bafc2e_o.png" width="798" height="174" alt="rst2pdf-tablestyles"></a>

The first row is a header row. It automatically takes the table-heading style.

The following rows are regular, and they take the table style, which has support for *zebra* tables with alternating colors (white and gray here).

The lone red cell at the right is special. Its content is this::

  .. class:: red

  red

If you don't know ReST, that means "red" is a paragraph with *class* red, so it will be styled whatever way that means (here: red background).

Usually that would mean you have a white (or gray) cell with a red paragraph in it. That looks incredibly ugly. 

So, rst2pdf tries to be clever: If there is a single element in a cell, it will try to guess the cell background from it.

And as you saw above, it works :-)