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 Pod::Parser 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.
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.
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 Pod::Parser for the specific details.
=item processing. These
messages indicate a bug in Pod::Text; you should never see them.
=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 Pod::Text::Termcap.
Pod::Parser, Pod::Text::Termcap, 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.