pod2text

POD2TEXT(1)            Perl Programmers Reference Guide            POD2TEXT(1)



NAME
       pod2text - Convert POD data to formatted ASCII text

SYNOPSIS
       pod2text [-aclost] [--code] [-i indent] [-q quotes] [-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.

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.

       -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.

       -o, --overstrike
           Format the output with overstruck 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.

       -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.

       -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.

DIAGNOSTICS
       If pod2text fails with errors, see Pod::Text and Pod::Parser for infor-
       mation 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 termi-
           nal 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.

SEE ALSO
       Pod::Text, Pod::Text::Color, Pod::Text::Overstrike, Pod::Text::Termcap,
       Pod::Parser

       The current version of this script 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@stanford.edu>.

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
       Copyright 1999, 2000, 2001 by 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 v5.8.6                       2005-05-14                       POD2TEXT(1)