Pod::Text - Convert POD data to formatted ASCII text |
Pod::Text - Convert POD data to formatted ASCII text
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');
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::Parser, Pod::Text supports the same methods and
interfaces. See the Pod::Parser manpage for all the details; briefly, one creates a
new parser with Pod::Text->new()
and then calls either
parse_from_filehandle()
or parse_from_file().
new()
can take options, in the form of key/value pairs, that control the
behavior of the parser. The currently recognized options are:
=item
entries with a
colon in the left margin. Defaults to false.
=over
blocks. Defaults to 4.
=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.
This may also be set to the special value none
, in which case no quote
marks are added around C<> text.
The standard Pod::Parser method parse_from_filehandle()
takes up to two
arguments, the first being the file handle to read POD from and the second
being the file handle to write the formatted output to. The first defaults
to STDIN if not given, and the second defaults to STDOUT. The method
parse_from_file()
is almost identical, except that its two arguments are the
input and output disk files instead. See the Pod::Parser manpage for the specific
details.
=item
processing. These
messages indicate a bug in Pod::Text; you should never see them.
pod2text()
interface
and the input file it was given could not be opened.
=command args
) that Pod::Man didn't know about. It was ignored.
E<>
escape that Pod::Text didn't
know about.
X<>
) that Pod::Text didn't know about.
=back
command that didn't correspond to an
=over
command.
Embedded Ctrl-As (octal 001) in the input will be mapped to spaces on output, due to an internal implementation detail.
This is a replacement for an earlier Pod::Text module written by Tom Christiansen. It has a revamped interface, since it now uses Pod::Parser, 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 the Pod::Text::Termcap manpage.
the Pod::Parser manpage, the Pod::Text::Termcap manpage, 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.
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>.
Copyright 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002 by 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.
Pod::Text - Convert POD data to formatted ASCII text |