Docutils, the reference implementation of reStructuredText and what Pelican is built upon, does not have options for starting section number at arbitrary levels (as far as I can tell). However, rather than relying on the section-numbering
role, you could use some simple CSS to style your section headers. This way you would not have the numbers in the generated markup, but you would still get the numbering you are after. A good article demonstrating the use of CSS generated content counters can be found here. The basic CSS is:
body {counter-reset: h2}
h2 {counter-reset: h3}
h3 {counter-reset: h4}
h4 {counter-reset: h5}
h5 {counter-reset: h6}
h2:before {counter-increment: h2; content: counter(h2) ". "}
h3:before {counter-increment: h3; content: counter(h2) "." counter(h3) ". "}
h4:before {counter-increment: h4; content: counter(h2) "." counter(h3) "." counter(h4) ". "}
h5:before {counter-increment: h5; content: counter(h2) "." counter(h3) "." counter(h4) "." counter(h5) ". "}
h6:before {counter-increment: h6; content: counter(h2) "." counter(h3) "." counter(h4) "." counter(h5) "." counter(h6) ". "}
This starts the section numbering at h2
elements, all the way down to h6
elements. All that you should need to do is add the CSS above to one of your stylesheets. This will give you section headers of the form (although I have cheated and just used Markdown here!):