man > Pod::Text

NAME
    Pod::Text - Convert POD data to formatted text

SYNOPSIS
        use Pod::Text;
        my $parser = Pod::Text->new (sentence => 1, 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 text. It uses no special formatting controls or codes, and
    its output is therefore suitable for nearly any device.

  Encoding
    Pod::Text uses the following logic to choose an output encoding, in order:

    1.  If a PerlIO encoding layer is set on the output file handle, do not do any output encoding
        and will instead rely on the PerlIO encoding layer.

    2.  If the "encoding" or "utf8" options are set, use the output encoding specified by those
        options.

    3.  If the input encoding of the POD source file was explicitly specified (using "=encoding") or
        automatically detected by Pod::Simple, use that as the output encoding as well.

    4.  Otherwise, if running on a non-EBCDIC system, use UTF-8 as the output encoding. Since this
        is a superset of ASCII, this will result in ASCII output unless the POD input contains
        non-ASCII characters without declaring or autodetecting an encoding (usually via E<>
        escapes).

    5.  Otherwise, for EBCDIC systems, output without doing any encoding and hope this works.

    One caveat: Pod::Text has to commit to an output encoding the first time it outputs a non-ASCII
    character, and then has to stick with it for consistency. However, "=encoding" commands don't
    have to be at the beginning of a POD document. If someone uses a non-ASCII character early in a
    document with an escape, such as E<0xEF>, and then puts "=encoding iso-8859-1" later, ideally
    Pod::Text would follow rule 3 and output the entire document as ISO 8859-1. Instead, it will
    commit to UTF-8 following rule 4 as soon as it sees that escape, and then stick with that
    encoding for the rest of the document.

    Unfortunately, there's no universally good choice for an output encoding. Each choice will be
    incorrect in some circumstances. This approach was chosen primarily for backwards compatibility.
    Callers should consider forcing the output encoding via "encoding" if they have any knowledge
    about what encoding the user may expect.

    In particular, consider importing the Encode::Locale module, if available, and setting
    "encoding" to "locale" to use an output encoding appropriate to the user's locale. But be aware
    that if the user is not using locales or is using a locale of "C", Encode::Locale will set the
    output encoding to US-ASCII. This will cause all non-ASCII characters will be replaced with "?"
    and produce a flurry of warnings about unsupported characters, which may or may not be what you
    want.

CLASS METHODS
    new(ARGS)
        Create a new Pod::Text object. ARGS should be a list of key/value pairs, where the keys are
        chosen from the following. Each option is annotated with the version of Pod::Text in which
        that option was added with its current meaning.

        alt [2.00] 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
            [2.13] 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.

        encoding
            [5.00] Specifies the encoding of the output. The value must be an encoding recognized by
            the Encode module (see Encode::Supported). If the output contains characters that cannot
            be represented in this encoding, that is an error that will be reported as configured by
            the "errors" option. If error handling is other than "die", the unrepresentable
            character will be replaced with the Encode substitution character (normally "?").

            If the output file handle has a PerlIO encoding layer set, this parameter will be
            ignored and no encoding will be done by Pod::Man. It will instead rely on the encoding
            layer to make whatever output encoding transformations are desired.

            WARNING: The input encoding of the POD source is independent from the output encoding,
            and setting this option does not affect the interpretation of the POD input. Unless your
            POD source is US-ASCII, its encoding should be declared with the "=encoding" command in
            the source, as near to the top of the file as possible. If this is not done, Pod::Simple
            will will attempt to guess the encoding and may be successful if it's Latin-1 or UTF-8,
            but it will produce warnings. See perlpod(1) for more information.

        errors
            [3.17] 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".

        guesswork
            [5.01] By default, Pod::Text applies some default formatting rules based on guesswork
            and regular expressions that are intended to make writing Perl documentation easier and
            require less explicit markup. These rules may not always be appropriate, particularly
            for documentation that isn't about Perl. This option allows turning all or some of it
            off.

            The special value "all" enables all guesswork. This is also the default for backward
            compatibility reasons. The special value "none" disables all guesswork. Otherwise, the
            value of this option should be a comma-separated list of one or more of the following
            keywords:

            quoting
                If no guesswork is enabled, any text enclosed in C<> is surrounded by double quotes
                in nroff (terminal) output unless the contents are already quoted. When this
                guesswork is enabled, quote marks will also be suppressed for Perl variables,
                function names, function calls, numbers, and hex constants.

            Any unknown guesswork name is silently ignored (for potential future compatibility), so
            be careful about spelling.

        indent
            [2.00] The number of spaces to indent regular text, and the default indentation for
            "=over" blocks. Defaults to 4.

        loose
            [2.00] 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
            [2.21] 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
            [3.17] 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
            [4.00] 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. Otherwise, it is split in half,
            and the first half of the string is used as the left quote and the second is used 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
            [3.00] 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
            false.

        stderr
            [3.10] 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
            [3.12] If this option is set to a true value, the output encoding is set to UTF-8. This
            is equivalent to setting "encoding" to "UTF-8" if "encoding" is not already set. It is
            supported for backward compatibility.

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

INSTANCE METHODS
    As a derived class from Pod::Simple, Pod::Text supports the same methods and interfaces. See
    Pod::Simple for all the details. This section summarizes the most-frequently-used methods and
    the ones added by Pod::Text.

    output_fh(FH)
        Direct the output from parse_file(), parse_lines(), or parse_string_document() to the file
        handle FH instead of "STDOUT".

    output_string(REF)
        Direct the output from parse_file(), parse_lines(), or parse_string_document() to the scalar
        variable pointed to by REF, rather than "STDOUT". For example:

            my $man = Pod::Man->new();
            my $output;
            $man->output_string(\$output);
            $man->parse_file('/some/input/file');

        Be aware that the output in that variable will already be encoded (see "Encoding").

    parse_file(PATH)
        Read the POD source from PATH and format it. By default, the output is sent to "STDOUT", but
        this can be changed with the output_fh() or output_string() methods.

    parse_from_file(INPUT, OUTPUT)
    parse_from_filehandle(FH, OUTPUT)
        Read the POD source from INPUT, format it, and output the results to OUTPUT.

        parse_from_filehandle() is provided for backward compatibility with older versions of
        Pod::Man. parse_from_file() should be used instead.

    parse_lines(LINES[, ...[, undef]])
        Parse the provided lines as POD source, writing the output to either "STDOUT" or the file
        handle set with the output_fh() or output_string() methods. This method can be called
        repeatedly to provide more input lines. An explicit "undef" should be passed to indicate the
        end of input.

        This method expects raw bytes, not decoded characters.

    parse_string_document(INPUT)
        Parse the provided scalar variable as POD source, writing the output to either "STDOUT" or
        the file handle set with the output_fh() or output_string() methods.

        This method expects raw bytes, not decoded characters.

FUNCTIONS
    Pod::Text exports one function for backward compatibility with older versions. This function is
    deprecated; instead, use the object-oriented interface described above.

    pod2text([[-a,] [-NNN,]] INPUT[, OUTPUT])
        Convert the POD source from INPUT to text and write it to OUTPUT. If OUTPUT is not given,
        defaults to "STDOUT". INPUT can be any expression supported as the second argument to
        two-argument open().

        If "-a" is given as an initial argument, pass the "alt" option to the Pod::Text constructor.
        This enables alternative formatting.

        If "-NNN" is given as an initial argument, pass the "width" option to the Pod::Text
        constructor with the number "NNN" as its argument. This sets the wrap line width to NNN.

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 either one character long or an even number (greater than one)
        characters long.

    POD document had syntax errors
        (F) The POD document being formatted had syntax errors and the "errors" option was set to
        "die".

COMPATIBILITY
    Pod::Text 2.03 (based on Pod::Parser) was the first version of this module included with Perl,
    in Perl 5.6.0. Earlier versions of Perl had a different Pod::Text module, with a different API.

    The current API based on Pod::Simple was added in Pod::Text 3.00. Pod::Text 3.01 was included in
    Perl 5.9.3, the first version of Perl to incorporate those changes. This is the first version
    that correctly supports all modern POD syntax. The parse_from_filehandle() method was re-added
    for backward compatibility in Pod::Text 3.07, included in Perl 5.9.4.

    Pod::Text 3.12, included in Perl 5.10.1, first implemented the current practice of attempting to
    match the default output encoding with the input encoding of the POD source, unless overridden
    by the "utf8" option or (added later) the "encoding" option.

    Support for anchor text in L<> links of type URL was added in Pod::Text 3.14, included in Perl
    5.11.5.

    parse_lines(), parse_string_document(), and parse_file() set a default output file handle of
    "STDOUT" if one was not already set as of Pod::Text 3.18, included in Perl 5.19.5.

    Pod::Text 4.00, included in Perl 5.23.7, aligned the module version and the version of the
    podlators distribution. All modules included in podlators, and the podlators distribution
    itself, share the same version number from this point forward.

    Pod::Text 4.09, included in Perl 5.25.7, fixed a serious bug on EBCDIC systems, present in all
    versions back to 3.00, that would cause opening brackets to disappear.

    Pod::Text 5.00 now defaults, on non-EBCDIC systems, to UTF-8 encoding if it sees a non-ASCII
    character in the input and the input encoding is not specified. It also commits to an encoding
    with the first non-ASCII character and does not change the output encoding if the input encoding
    changes. The Encode module is now used for all output encoding rather than PerlIO layers, which
    fixes earlier problems with output to scalars.

AUTHOR
    Russ Allbery <rra AT cpan.org>, 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 1999-2002, 2004, 2006, 2008-2009, 2012-2016, 2018-2019, 2022 Russ Allbery
    <rra AT cpan.org>

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

SEE ALSO
    Encode::Locale, Encode::Supproted, Pod::Simple, Pod::Text::Termcap, perlpod(1), pod2text(1)

    The current version of this module is always available from its web site at
    <https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/software/podlators/>. It is also part of the Perl core
    distribution as of 5.6.0.