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

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->parsefromfilehandle;

# Read POD from file.pod and write to file.txt.

$parser->parsefromfile ('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 parsefromfilehandle() or parsefromfile(). 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 parsefromfilehandle() 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 parsefromfile() 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. RREESSTTRRIICCTTIIOONNSS

Embedded Ctrl-As (octal 001) in the input will be mapped to spaces on

output, due to an internal implementation detail. NNOOTTEESS 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.