Pod::Text(3perl)                 Perl Programmers Reference Guide                Pod::Text(3perl)



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.

SEE ALSO
       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.

AUTHOR
       Russ Allbery <rra AT stanford.edu>, based very heavily on the original Pod::Text by Tom
       Christiansen <tchrist AT mox.com> and its conversion to Pod::Parser by Brad Appleton
       <bradapp AT 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 AT stanford.edu>.

       This program is free software; you may redistribute it and/or modify it under the same
       terms as Perl itself.



perl v5.20.2                                2014-12-27                           Pod::Text(3perl)