Reducing the number of warnings when building docs

[zachmprince]

What is the change?

This PR mainly includes minor fixes to reduce errors/warnings during the documentation build. Here are a list of things included:

• Escaping RST special characters
• Formatting pieces of documentation that should be rendered as code
• Making various type definitions more explicit to avoid warnings there are multiple possible interpretations
• Removing duplicate references
• Making some links "anonymous"
• Removing API headings that aren't allowed by numpy code standards
• Formatting multiline lists properly
• Various black/ruff formatting

A more significant change includes modifications to the dochelpers package. This includes:

• A new function that escapes special characters in a inputted string. This is used in the parameter and settings report table functions, which were including special characters from the descriptions.
• The ability to a label to created tables

Why is the change being made?

This somewhat of a "basic" maintenance PR: making docs render properly. On a more practical level, reducing the number of warnings when building docs helps pick out future bugs written in the documentation.

---

Checklist

• This PR has only one purpose or idea.
• Tests have been added/updated to verify any new/changed code.

• The code style follows good practices.
• The commit message(s) follow good practices.

• The release notes have been updated if necessary.
• The documentation is still up-to-date in the doc folder.
• The dependencies are still up-to-date in pyproject.toml.

[john-science]

Looks great!