There is a previous question that explains how to add a color span to some reStructuredText.
To recap the procedure:
First, you have the role.
.. role:: red
An example of using :red:`interpreted text`
It translates into as follows.
<p>An example of using <span class="red">interpreted text</span></p>
Now, you have the red class, you can use CSS for changing colors.
.red {
color:red;
}
How do you do this if you want text that spans multiple lines? For example:
.. role:: red
:red:`paragraph 1
paragraph 2
paragraph 3`
Where paragraph 1, 2, & 3 would all be "red". If I try to do this I get the warning message:
WARNING: Inline interpreted text or phrase reference start-string without end-string.
It doesn't create the span and inserts ":red:" into the text. It just doesn't interpret this as a string (as the warning suggests).
Basically, can this be done in reStructuredText, and if it can, how?
I'm using Sphinx 1.1.3.
There are a number of ways to do this, but one of them is to use the class directive:
.. class:: red
This is a paragraph.
This is another paragraph.
Most docutils HTML writers will put that into html output as a class html attribute, which you can then style with CSS.
In Sphinx, in particular, however, you may need to use rst-class instead of class in at least some cases. See: https://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/2.0/usage/restructuredtext/basics.html
Also, many block-level elements in RestructuredText take a :class: parameter which does pretty much the same thing.