LeXtudio RestructuredText extension for Visual Studio Code

[Jonathan Sachs]

If you use this extension, I hope you can help me figure out how to make it work.

(If you haven't heard of it, it's supposed to display a formatted RST file in the right half of the editor's window while you edit the file in the left half.)

I installed the extension and clicked the "split screen" icon below the menu bar.I got a popup message that said, "Please review Python installation on this machine before using this extension."

I clicked "Learn more" and learned that the extension depends on Python 3.5 or later. My system runs Python 2.7 because our production environment uses several tools that depend on it, but I have Python 3.8 installed too. I followed the "learn more" suggestion to add the path of the Python 3.8 directory to the VS Code settings file in a python.pythonPath directive. Then I tried again, and got the same message.

Did I modify the settings file right? I think so; here's how it looks so others can check. (Line 2 has been added.)

    {
        "python.pythonPath": "C:\\Program Files\\Python38\\",
        "editor.minimap.enabled": false,
        "breadcrumbs.enabled": true
    }

Did I put the right value in the string? I think so; when I examine C:\Program Files\Python38\ in File Explorer I see that it's a Python installation's top level directory, and python.exe is in it.

Did I modify the right file? I did; when I change its "breadcrumbs.enabled" directive from true to false, the editor's breadcrumb display disappears.

The extension instructions recommend using Microsoft's Python extension to change the setting. It says, "Once you have that Python extension installed, open `conf.py` in VSCode." It's not clear what this means, since the VSC settings file is named settings.json, but I hoped that when I opened the file that would become clear. But the instructions don't say where this file is, and I can't find it. I searched my user directory and both Program Files directories, and the only conf.py files I found were in Sphinx projects.

One person told me that the project's conf.py is the one I'm supposed to modify. That doesn't make sense, since there's no way for the editor to tell what project an RST file is in when it opens the file. (The file could perfectly well be in several!) I tried it anyway, but it didn't do anything.

Any ideas?