# phpman > perldoc > Pod::Text

## NAME
    [Pod::Text](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Pod%3A%3AText/markdown) - Convert POD data to formatted text

## SYNOPSIS
        use [Pod::Text](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Pod%3A%3AText/markdown);
        my $parser = [Pod::Text](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Pod%3A%3AText/markdown)->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](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Pod%3A%3AText/markdown) 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
    whatsoever, and its output is therefore suitable for nearly any device.

    As a derived class from [Pod::Simple](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Pod%3A%3ASimple/markdown), [Pod::Text](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Pod%3A%3AText/markdown) supports the same methods and interfaces. See
    [Pod::Simple](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Pod%3A%3ASimple/markdown) for all the details; briefly, one creates a new parser with "[Pod::Text](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Pod%3A%3AText/markdown)->new()" and
    then normally calls parse_file().

### new
    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. 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
        If set to a true value, [Pod::Text](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Pod%3A%3AText/markdown) 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
        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](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Pod%3A%3AText/markdown) 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 should be
        properly declared unless it's US-ASCII. [Pod::Simple](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Pod%3A%3ASimple/markdown) will attempt to guess the encoding and
        may be successful if it's Latin-1 or UTF-8, but it will produce warnings. Use the
        "=encoding" command to declare the encoding. See [perlpod(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/perlpod/1/markdown) for more information.

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

    The standard [Pod::Simple](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Pod%3A%3ASimple/markdown) 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](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Pod%3A%3ASimple/markdown) 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. Be aware
    that parse_lines() and parse_string_document() both expect raw bytes, not decoded characters.

    To put the output from any parse method into a string instead of a file handle, call the
### output_string

    See [Pod::Simple](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Pod%3A%3ASimple/markdown) 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](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Pod%3A%3AText/markdown); you should never see them.

    Can't open %s for reading: %s
        (F) [Pod::Text](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Pod%3A%3AText/markdown) 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".

## 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](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Pod%3A%3AText/markdown) 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](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Pod%3A%3AText/markdown) 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](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Pod%3A%3AText/markdown) module written by Tom Christiansen. It has a
    revamped interface, since it now uses [Pod::Simple](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Pod%3A%3ASimple/markdown), but an interface roughly compatible with the
    old [Pod::Text::pod2text](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Pod%3A%3AText%3A%3Apod2text/markdown)() function is still available. Please change to the new calling
    convention, though.

    The original [Pod::Text](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Pod%3A%3AText/markdown) 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](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Pod%3A%3AText%3A%3ATermcap/markdown).

## AUTHOR
    Russ Allbery <<rra@cpan.org>>, based *very* heavily on the original [Pod::Text](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Pod%3A%3AText/markdown) by Tom Christiansen
    <<tchrist@mox.perl.com>> and its conversion to [Pod::Parser](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Pod%3A%3AParser/markdown) by Brad Appleton
    <<bradapp@enteract.com>>. Sean Burke's initial conversion of [Pod::Man](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Pod%3A%3AMan/markdown) to use [Pod::Simple](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Pod%3A%3ASimple/markdown) provided
    much-needed guidance on how to use [Pod::Simple](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Pod%3A%3ASimple/markdown).

## COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
    Copyright 1999-2002, 2004, 2006, 2008-2009, 2012-2016, 2018-2019 Russ Allbery <<rra@cpan.org>>

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

## SEE ALSO
    [Pod::Simple](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Pod%3A%3ASimple/markdown), [Pod::Text::Termcap](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/perldoc/Pod%3A%3AText%3A%3ATermcap/markdown), [perlpod(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/perlpod/1/markdown), [pod2text(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/pod2text/1/markdown)

    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.