Ubuntu Manpage: pod2text - Convert POD data to formatted ASCII text

Provided by: perl_5.18.2-2ubuntu1.7_amd64

NAME

       pod2text - Convert POD data to formatted ASCII text

SYNOPSIS

       pod2text [-aclostu] [--code] [--errors=style] [-i indent]
           [-q quotes] [--nourls] [--stderr] [-w width]
           [input [output ...]]

       pod2text -h

DESCRIPTION

       pod2text is a front-end for Pod::Text and its subclasses.  It uses them to generate
       formatted ASCII text from POD source.  It can optionally use either termcap sequences or
       ANSI color escape sequences to format the text.

       input is the file to read for POD source (the POD can be embedded in code).  If input
       isn't given, it defaults to "STDIN".  output, if given, is the file to which to write the
       formatted output.  If output isn't given, the formatted output is written to "STDOUT".
       Several POD files can be processed in the same pod2text invocation (saving module load and
       compile times) by providing multiple pairs of input and output files on the command line.

OPTIONS

-a, --alt
Use an alternate output format that, among other things, uses a different heading
style and marks "=item" entries with a colon in the left margin.

--code
Include any non-POD text from the input file in the output as well. Useful for
viewing code documented with POD blocks with the POD rendered and the code left
intact.

-c, --color
Format the output with ANSI color escape sequences. Using this option requires that
Term::ANSIColor be installed on your system.

-i indent, --indent=indent
Set the number of spaces to indent regular text, and the default indentation for
"=over" blocks. Defaults to 4 spaces if this option isn't given.

-errors=style
Set the error handling style. "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 "die".

-h, --help
Print out usage information and exit.

-l, --loose
Print a blank line after a "=head1" heading. Normally, no blank line is printed after
"=head1", although one is still printed after "=head2", because this is the expected
formatting for manual pages; if you're formatting arbitrary text documents, using this
option is recommended.

-m width, --left-margin=width, --margin=width
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 -i option.

--nourls
Normally, L<> formatting codes with a URL but anchor text are formatted to show both
the anchor text and the URL. In other words:

L<foo|http://example.com/>

is formatted as:

foo <http://example.com/>

This flag, if given, 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.

-o, --overstrike
Format the output with overstrike printing. Bold text is rendered as character,
backspace, character. Italics and file names are rendered as underscore, backspace,
character. Many pagers, such as less, know how to convert this to bold or underlined
text.

-q quotes, --quotes=quotes
Sets the quote marks used to surround C<> text to quotes. If quotes is a single
character, it is used as both the left and right quote; if quotes is two characters,
the first character is used as the left quote and the second as the right quoted; and
if quotes is four characters, the first two are used as the left quote and the second
two as the right quote.

quotes may also be set to the special value "none", in which case no quote marks are
added around C<> text.

-s, --sentence
Assume each sentence ends with two spaces and try to preserve that spacing. Without
this option, all consecutive whitespace in non-verbatim paragraphs is compressed into
a single space.

--stderr
By default, pod2text dies if any errors are detected in the POD input. If --stderr is
given and no --errors flag is present, errors are sent to standard error, but pod2text
does not abort. This is equivalent to "--errors=stderr" and is supported for backward
compatibility.

-t, --termcap
Try to determine the width of the screen and the bold and underline sequences for the
terminal from termcap, and use that information in formatting the output. Output will
be wrapped at two columns less than the width of your terminal device. Using this
option requires that your system have a termcap file somewhere where Term::Cap can
find it and requires that your system support termios. With this option, the output
of pod2text will contain terminal control sequences for your current terminal type.

-u, --utf8
By default, pod2text tries to use the same output encoding as its input encoding (to
be backward-compatible with older versions). This option says to instead force the
output encoding 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.

-w, --width=width, -width
The column at which to wrap text on the right-hand side. Defaults to 76, unless -t is
given, in which case it's two columns less than the width of your terminal device.

EXIT STATUS

       As long as all documents processed result in some output, even if that output includes
       errata (a "POD ERRORS" section generated with "--errors=pod"), pod2text will exit with
       status 0.  If any of the documents being processed do not result in an output document,
       pod2text will exit with status 1.  If there are syntax errors in a POD document being
       processed and the error handling style is set to the default of "die", pod2text will abort
       immediately with exit status 255.

DIAGNOSTICS

       If pod2text fails with errors, see Pod::Text and Pod::Simple for information about what
       those errors might mean.  Internally, it can also produce the following diagnostics:

       -c (--color) requires Term::ANSIColor be installed
           (F) -c or --color were given, but Term::ANSIColor could not be loaded.

       Unknown option: %s
           (F) An unknown command line option was given.

       In addition, other Getopt::Long error messages may result from invalid command-line
       options.

ENVIRONMENT

       COLUMNS
           If -t is given, pod2text will take the current width of your screen from this
           environment variable, if available.  It overrides terminal width information in
           TERMCAP.

       TERMCAP
           If -t is given, pod2text will use the contents of this environment variable if
           available to determine the correct formatting sequences for your current terminal
           device.

AUTHOR

       Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu>.

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

       Copyright 1999, 2000, 2001, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2013 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.