Pod::PlainText

Pod::PlainText(3)      Perl Programmers Reference Guide      Pod::PlainText(3)



NAME
       Pod::PlainText - Convert POD data to formatted ASCII text

SYNOPSIS
           use Pod::PlainText;
           my $parser = Pod::PlainText->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::PlainText 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::PlainText supports the same
       methods and interfaces.  See Pod::Parser for all the details; briefly,
       one creates a new parser with "Pod::PlainText->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:

       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.

       indent
           The number of spaces to indent regular text, and the default inden-
           tation 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.

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

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

       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 STD-
       OUT.  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.

DIAGNOSTICS
       Bizarre space in item
           (W) Something has gone wrong in internal "=item" processing.  This
           message indicates a bug in Pod::PlainText; you should never see it.

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

       Unknown escape: %s
           (W) The POD source contained an "E<>" escape that Pod::PlainText
           didn't know about.

       Unknown sequence: %s
           (W) The POD source contained a non-standard internal sequence
           (something of the form "X<>") that Pod::PlainText didn't know
           about.

       Unmatched =back
           (W) Pod::PlainText encountered a "=back" command that didn't corre-
           spond to an "=over" command.

RESTRICTIONS
       Embedded Ctrl-As (octal 001) in the input will be mapped to spaces on
       output, due to an internal implementation detail.

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::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 problem-
       atic 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::Parser, Pod::Text::Termcap, pod2text(1)

AUTHOR
       Please report bugs using <http://rt.cpan.org>.

       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>.



perl v5.8.6                       2001-09-21                 Pod::PlainText(3)