Table Styles and Alignment in reStructuredText

Did you know? The default stylesheet bundled with Docutils (the standard renderer for reStructuredText) supports two special class values for tables, “booktabs” and “borderless”, and kbits-theme supports them as well. kbits-theme also includes support for alignment of tables in the center or at the right edge of a page.

When writing in reStructuredText, one can set the class for a table using the “class” directive or the :class: option of the “table” directive. Alternatively, a table can be expressed using the “csv-table” directive or “list-table” directive, both of which support the :class: option.

If a table is given the “booktabs” class, the only rules in the table will be two slightly thick rules at the top & bottom of the table and a thin rule after the head, like so:

Color	Element
Blue	Water
Green	Earth
Red	Fire
Yellow	Air

If the table is instead given the “borderless” class, it will not have any rules at all, like so:

Color	Element
Blue	Water
Green	Earth
Red	Fire
Yellow	Air

The three table directives also support an :align: option, which can be set to “left”, “center”, or “right” to cause the table to be left-aligned, centered, or right-aligned. For example, a centered table:

Color	Element
Blue	Water
Green	Earth
Red	Fire
Yellow	Air

and a right-aligned table:

Color	Element
Blue	Water
Green	Earth
Red	Fire
Yellow	Air

Note that, unlike in HTML documents styled with Docutils’ default stylesheet, the text inside aligned tables is always left-aligned (or centered, for headers) rather than matching the alignment of the table. This is a deliberate design choice by kbits-theme.