NAME¶
Pod::Text - Convert POD data to formatted ASCII text
SYNOPSIS¶
use Pod::Text;
my $parser = Pod::Text->new (sentence => 0, width => 78);
# Read POD from STDIN and write to STDOUT.
$parser->parse_from_filehandle;
# Read POD from file.pod and write to file.txt.
$parser->parse_from_file ('file.pod', 'file.txt');
DESCRIPTION¶
Pod::Text is a module that can convert documentation in the POD format (the
preferred language for documenting Perl) into formatted ASCII. It uses no
special formatting controls or codes whatsoever, and its output is therefore
suitable for nearly any device.
As a derived class from Pod::Simple, Pod::Text supports the same methods and
interfaces. See Pod::Simple for all the details; briefly, one creates a new
parser with "Pod::Text->new()" and then normally calls
parse_file().
new() can take options, in the form of key/value pairs, that control the
behavior of the parser. The currently recognized options are:
- alt
- If set to a true value, selects an alternate output format
that, among other things, uses a different heading style and marks
"=item" entries with a colon in the left margin. Defaults to
false.
- code
- If set to a true value, the non-POD parts of the input file
will be included in the output. Useful for viewing code documented with
POD blocks with the POD rendered and the code left intact.
- indent
- The number of spaces to indent regular text, and the
default indentation for "=over" blocks. Defaults to 4.
- loose
- If set to a true value, a blank line is printed after a
"=head1" heading. If set to false (the default), no blank line
is printed after "=head1", although one is still printed after
"=head2". This is the default because it's the expected
formatting for manual pages; if you're formatting arbitrary text
documents, setting this to true may result in more pleasing output.
- margin
- The width of the left margin in spaces. Defaults to 0. This
is the margin for all text, including headings, not the amount by which
regular text is indented; for the latter, see the indent option. To
set the right margin, see the width option.
- quotes
- Sets the quote marks used to surround C<> text. If
the value is a single character, it is used as both the left and right
quote; if it is two characters, the first character is used as the left
quote and the second as the right quoted; and if it is four characters,
the first two are used as the left quote and the second two as the right
quote.
This may also be set to the special value "none", in which case no
quote marks are added around C<> text.
- sentence
- If set to a true value, Pod::Text will assume that each
sentence ends in two spaces, and will try to preserve that spacing. If set
to false, all consecutive whitespace in non-verbatim paragraphs is
compressed into a single space. Defaults to true.
- stderr
- Send error messages about invalid POD to standard error
instead of appending a POD ERRORS section to the generated output.
- utf8
- By default, Pod::Text uses the same output encoding as the
input encoding of the POD source (provided that Perl was built with
PerlIO; otherwise, it doesn't encode its output). If this option is given,
the output encoding is forced to UTF-8.
Be aware that, when using this option, the input encoding of your POD source
must be properly declared unless it is US-ASCII or Latin-1. POD input
without an "=encoding" command will be assumed to be in Latin-1,
and if it's actually in UTF-8, the output will be double-encoded. See
perlpod(1) for more information on the "=encoding"
command.
- width
- The column at which to wrap text on the right-hand side.
Defaults to 76.
The standard Pod::Simple method
parse_file() takes one argument, the file
or file handle to read from, and writes output to standard output unless that
has been changed with the
output_fh() method. See Pod::Simple for the
specific details and for other alternative interfaces.
DIAGNOSTICS¶
- Bizarre space in item
- Item called without tag
- (W) Something has gone wrong in internal "=item"
processing. These messages indicate a bug in Pod::Text; you should never
see them.
- Can't open %s for reading: %s
- (F) Pod::Text was invoked via the compatibility mode
pod2text() interface and the input file it was given could not be
opened.
- Invalid quote specification "%s"
- (F) The quote specification given (the quotes option to the
constructor) was invalid. A quote specification must be one, two, or four
characters long.
BUGS¶
Encoding handling assumes that PerlIO is available and does not work properly if
it isn't. The "utf8" option is therefore not supported unless Perl
is built with PerlIO support.
CAVEATS¶
If Pod::Text is given the "utf8" option, the encoding of its output
file handle will be forced to UTF-8 if possible, overriding any existing
encoding. This will be done even if the file handle is not created by
Pod::Text and was passed in from outside. This maintains consistency
regardless of PERL_UNICODE and other settings.
If the "utf8" option is not given, the encoding of its output file
handle will be forced to the detected encoding of the input POD, which
preserves whatever the input text is. This ensures backward compatibility with
earlier, pre-Unicode versions of this module, without large numbers of Perl
warnings.
This is not ideal, but it seems to be the best compromise. If it doesn't work
for you, please let me know the details of how it broke.
NOTES¶
This is a replacement for an earlier Pod::Text module written by Tom
Christiansen. It has a revamped interface, since it now uses Pod::Simple, but
an interface roughly compatible with the old
Pod::Text::pod2text()
function is still available. Please change to the new calling convention,
though.
The original Pod::Text contained code to do formatting via termcap sequences,
although it wasn't turned on by default and it was problematic to get it to
work at all. This rewrite doesn't even try to do that, but a subclass of it
does. Look for Pod::Text::Termcap.
SEE ALSO¶
Pod::Simple, Pod::Text::Termcap,
perlpod(1),
pod2text(1)
The current version of this module is always available from its web site at
<
http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/software/podlators/>. It is also part of
the Perl core distribution as of 5.6.0.
AUTHOR¶
Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu>, based
very heavily on the original
Pod::Text by Tom Christiansen <tchrist@mox.perl.com> and its conversion
to Pod::Parser by Brad Appleton <bradapp@enteract.com>. Sean Burke's
initial conversion of Pod::Man to use Pod::Simple provided much-needed
guidance on how to use Pod::Simple.
COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE¶
Copyright 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2009 Russ Allbery
<rra@stanford.edu>.
This program is free software; you may redistribute it and/or modify it under
the same terms as Perl itself.