Ubuntu Manpage: Pod::Text - Convert POD data to formatted ASCII text

Provided by: perl-doc_5.22.1-9ubuntu0.9_all

NAME

       Pod::Text - Convert POD data to formatted ASCII text

SYNOPSIS

           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');

DESCRIPTION

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 Pod::Simple
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:

alt If set to a true value, selects an alternate output format that, among other things, uses a different
heading style and marks "=item" entries with a colon in the left margin. Defaults to false.

code
If set to a true value, the non-POD parts of the input file will be included in the output. Useful
for viewing code documented with POD blocks with the POD rendered and the code left intact.

errors
How to report errors. "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".

indent
The number of spaces to indent regular text, and the default indentation for "=over" blocks.
Defaults to 4.

loose
If set to a true value, a blank line is printed after a "=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.

margin
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 the indent option.
To set the right margin, see the width 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 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.

quotes
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.

sentence
If set to a true value, Pod::Text will assume that each sentence ends in two spaces, and will try to
preserve that spacing. If set to false, all consecutive whitespace in non-verbatim paragraphs is
compressed into a single space. Defaults to true.

stderr
Send error messages about invalid POD to standard error instead of appending a POD ERRORS section to
the generated output. This is equivalent to setting "errors" to "stderr" if "errors" is not already
set. It is supported for backward compatibility.

utf8
By default, Pod::Text uses the same output encoding as the input encoding of the POD source (provided
that Perl was built with PerlIO; otherwise, it doesn't encode its output). If this option is given,
the output encoding is forced 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.

width
The column at which to wrap text on the right-hand side. Defaults to 76.

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 Pod::Simple for more specific details on the methods available to all derived parsers.

DIAGNOSTICS

       Bizarre space in item
       Item called without tag
           (W) Something has gone wrong in internal "=item"  processing.   These  messages  indicate  a  bug  in
           Pod::Text; you should never see them.

       Can't open %s for reading: %s
           (F)  Pod::Text  was invoked via the compatibility mode pod2text() interface and the input file it was
           given could not be opened.

       Invalid errors setting "%s"
           (F) The "errors" parameter to the constructor was set to an unknown value.

       Invalid quote specification "%s"
           (F) The quote specification given (the "quotes" option to the  constructor)  was  invalid.   A  quote
           specification must be one, two, or four characters long.

       POD document had syntax errors
           (F) The POD document being formatted had syntax errors and the "errors" option was set to "die".

BUGS

       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.

CAVEATS

       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.

NOTES

       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 Pod::Text::Termcap.

AUTHOR

       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 AND LICENSE

       Copyright 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2009, 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.

perl v5.22.1                                       2020-10-19                                   Pod::Text(3perl)