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::Simple, Pod::Text supports the same methods and
interfaces. See the Pod::Simple manpage 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:
=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::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 the Pod::Simple manpage for the
specific details and for other alternative interfaces.
=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.
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 the Pod::Text::Termcap manpage.
the Pod::Simple 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>. Sean Burke's initial conversion of Pod::Man to use Pod::Simple provided much-needed guidance on how to use Pod::Simple.
Copyright 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2006 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 |