| Pod::Text - Convert POD data to formatted text |
Pod::Text - Convert POD data to formatted text
use Pod::Text;
my $parser = Pod::Text->new (sentence => 1, 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 text. 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.
die says to throw an exception on any POD
formatting error. stderr says to report errors on standard error, but
not to throw an exception. pod says to include a POD ERRORS section
in the resulting documentation summarizing the errors. none ignores
POD errors entirely, as much as possible.
The default is pod.
=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.
L<foo|http://example.com/>;
is formatted as:
foo <http://example.com/>;
This option, if set to a true value, suppresses the URL when anchor text
is given, so this example would be formatted as just foo. This can
produce less cluttered output in cases where the URLs are not particularly
important.
This may also be set to the special value none, in which case no quote
marks are added around C<> text.
errors to stderr if errors is not already
set. It is supported for backward compatibility.
Be aware that, when using this option, the input encoding of your POD
source should be properly declared unless it's US-ASCII. Pod::Simple will
attempt to guess the encoding and may be successful if it's Latin-1 or
UTF-8, but it will produce warnings. Use the =encoding command to
declare the encoding. See perlpod(1) for more information.
The standard Pod::Simple method parse_file() takes one argument naming the
POD file to read from. By default, the output is sent to STDOUT, but
this can be changed with the output_fh() method.
The standard Pod::Simple method parse_from_file() takes up to two
arguments, the first being the input file to read POD from and the second
being the file to write the formatted output to.
You can also call parse_lines() to parse an array of lines or
parse_string_document() to parse a document already in memory. As with
parse_file(), parse_lines() and parse_string_document() default to sending
their output to STDOUT unless changed with the output_fh() method.
To put the output from any parse method into a string instead of a file
handle, call the output_string() method instead of output_fh().
See the Pod::Simple manpage for more specific details on the methods available to all derived parsers.
=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.
errors parameter to the constructor was set to an unknown value.
quotes option to the
constructor) was invalid. A quote specification must be either one
character long or an even number (greater than one) characters long.
errors
option was set to die.
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.
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.
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.
Russ Allbery <rra@cpan.org>, 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 1999-2002, 2004, 2006, 2008-2009, 2012-2016, 2018 Russ Allbery <rra@cpan.org>
This program is free software; you may redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.
the Pod::Simple manpage, the Pod::Text::Termcap manpage, perlpod(1), pod2text(1)
The current version of this module is always available from its web site at https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/software/podlators/. It is also part of the Perl core distribution as of 5.6.0.
| Pod::Text - Convert POD data to formatted text |