Special roles and directives

This section contains information about special roles and directives that come bundled with the MyST Parser Sphinx extension.

Insert the date and reading time

New in version 0.14.0: The sub-ref role and word counting.

You may insert the “last updated” date and estimated reading time into your document via substitution definitions, which can be accessed via the sub-ref role.

For example:

> {sub-ref}`today` | {sub-ref}`wordcount-words` words | {sub-ref}`wordcount-minutes` min read

Apr 15, 2022 | 99 words | 0 min read

today is replaced by either the date on which the document is parsed, with the format set by today_fmt, or the today variable if set in the configuration file.

The reading speed is computed using the myst_words_per_minute configuration (see the Sphinx configuration options).