The reStructureText extension preview functionality is defunct. The reStructureText team says this is esbonio issue.

[MartinCupak]

Expected behavior

In MS VS code, I expect functionality as per the animated gif on reStructuredText main page.

Actual behavior

no preview displayed.

Just open the .rst file and click on icon to "Open preview to the side", that does nothing.

Note: I have reported this at reStructureText github repo first. However, the reStructureText team says this is esbonio issue, hence reporting here.
(vscode-restructuredtext/vscode-restructuredtext#450)

Log output

N/A - nothing printed at all in the vs code output or debug console

(Optional) Settings from conf.py

Esbonio information
v0.11.0

reStructuredText
v190.4.1

Visual Studio Code information
Version: 1.92.0 Commit: b1c0a14de1414fcdaa400695b4db1c0799bc3124 Date: 2024-07-31T23:26:45.634Z Electron: 30.1.2 ElectronBuildId: 9870757 Chromium: 124.0.6367.243 Node.js: 20.14.0 V8: 12.4.254.20-electron.0 OS: Linux x64 5.15.0-117-generic

Operating system information
Linux Ubuntu 20.04LTS

Python information
3.9.19

[FrightRisk]

We have not been able to use the Esbonio preview for months. Last week, we could see errors in the log about versions of "doc8" and "rstcheck" so we updated to later versions in our requirements.txt file and don't see any debug info. Clicking the preview icon does nothing.

[lextm]

@FrightRisk please create your own issue and follow the wizard to provide necessary information. Lingering under another issue doesn't help much as your case can be different in several ways.

[alcarney]

@MartinCupak it's a hard to offer much advice without any logs.

The server is very quiet by default, you can try setting esbonio.server.logLevel to debug and running the Esbonio: Restart Language Server command from the command palette. You should then (hopefully!) see more information in the Esboino channel in the VSCode's Output panel.

In general however, in order to have a working preview you will need

• to make sure VSCode is using the same Python environment you use when building your docs outside of VSCode. You can use the Python: Select interpreter command to change it, or bypass the Python extension entirely by setting esbonio.server.pythonPath

• the esbonio Python package needs to be installed into the same Python environment you selected in the previous step. (Though the extension should offer to install it for you if required.)

• the extension will need to have managed to do a complete build of your docs without crashing (you will have to check the logs for details)

Hope that helps!

[MartinCupak]

Thanks, @alcarney, I'll give it a go once I have those extra 10 minutes for it ;-)

[lextm]

BTW, you shouldn't be using the old 0.11 release. The new 0.95.2 works very well for me. Check out #899 for more details.