Custom counters in Sphinx

[iggapres]

Hi there,

I've been searching the web quite painstakingly for this with no luck, so I ask you!

Is there a way to create some custom counters using rst/Sphinx, as in Asciidoctor (https://docs.asciidoctor.org/asciidoc/latest/attributes/counters/)?

I have a bunch of files, one per section, whose section names contain a number.
I may have to reorganize those files, add or remove some, but I want the numbering in the section names to still be consistent without having to re-edit everything.

eg. I have rst files with content like

a.rst

Task 1
--------
...

b.rst

Task 2
---------
...

and so on, you get the picture.

In the index.rst all file are declared in the toctree block.

I'd love to replace all the hardcoded numbers with some automatic counter (which is not the section number).

Any tip?

Thanks for you help. :)

[jdillard]

I think you would have to make a custom role, but even they advise against using counters, especially across pages like you want to. I think you'll find you will run into several issues, especially building in parallel.