Pod::Text - Convert POD data to formatted ASCII text
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:
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.
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.
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
.
The number of spaces to indent regular text, and the default indentation for
=over
blocks. Defaults to 4.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
(W) Something has gone wrong in internal =item
processing. These
messages indicate a bug in Pod::Text; you should never see them.
(F) Pod::Text was invoked via the compatibility mode pod2text() interface and the input file it was given could not be opened.
(F) The errors
parameter to the constructor was set to an unknown value.
(F) The quote specification given (the quotes
option to the
constructor) was invalid. A quote specification must be one, two, or four
characters long.
(F) The POD document being formatted had syntax errors and the 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 Pod::Text::Termcap.
Pod::Simple, Pod::Text::Termcap, perlpod(1), 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, 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.