Question

I want to open a link in a new window using reStucturedText. Is this possible?

This opens link in the same window:

You can `check your location here. <http://geoiptool.com>`_

Answer 1

To open a page in a new window or tag you can add the attribute target="_blank" to your hyperlink although I’m not sure how you can add attributes to inline hyperlinks in reStructuredText. However, from the Docutils FAQ, is nested inline markup possible, you can use the raw directive to include raw HTML into your document, for example

You can |location_link|.

.. |location_link| raw:: html

   <a href="http://geoiptool.com" target="_blank">check your location here</a>

Update to address comments

I’ve had the question “why does reStructuredText not have [insert some awesome feature]”.

In this case, “why does reStructuredText not have a way to specify how links are opened” — I think reStructuredText doesn’t have an easy way of doing this since the behaviour of how clicking a link works isn’t really it’s responsibility. reStructuredText transforms markup — how that markup is ultimately displayed is not up to reStructuredText, but whatever browser or viewer the user chooses to use.

In the case of opening a link in a web browser, good useability practice dictates that you should not force a user to open a link in a new tab (which is what adding target="_blank" is doing). Rather, you should leave the choice of how to open the link up to the user. If a user wants to open a link in a new tab, then they can use their middle mouse button (or whatever their favourite shortcut key is).

So I think that it is perfectly acceptable that reStructureText does not have an easy target="_blank" feature. The fact that it is possible is nice for people who really want to do this is good, and the fact that it is a bit of pain to do so is good for discouraging this practice.