After unpacking and installing the Docutils package, the following shell commands will generate HTML for all included documentation:
cd <archive_directory_path>/tools buildhtml.py ../
The final directory name of the <archive_directory_path> is "docutils" for snapshots. For official releases, the directory may be called "docutils-X.Y", where "X.Y" is the release version. Alternatively:
cd <archive_directory_path> tools/buildhtml.py --config=tools/docutils.conf
Some files may generate system messages (warnings and errors). The tools/test.txt file (under the archive directory) contains 5 intentional errors. (They test the error reporting mechanism!)
There are many front-end tools in the unpacked "tools" subdirectory. You may want to begin with the "html.py" front-end tool. Most tools take up to two arguments, the source path and destination path, with STDIN and STDOUT being the defaults. Use the "--help" option to the front-end tools for details on options and arguments. See Docutils Front-End Tools (docs/tools.txt) for full documentation.
The package modules are continually growing and evolving. The docutils.statemachine module is usable independently. It contains extensive inline documentation (in reStructuredText format of course).
Contributions are welcome!