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Pod::Text(3)          User Contributed Perl Documentation         Pod::Text(3)

NAME
       Pod::Text - Convert POD data to formatted ASCII text
SYNOPSIS
           use Pod::Text;
           my $parser = Pod::Text->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::Text 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::Simple, Pod::Text supports the same
       methods and interfaces.  See Pod::Simple for all the details; briefly,
       one creates a new parser with "Pod::Text->new()" and then normally
       calls parse_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.
       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 "output".
       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; if
           it is two characters, the first character is used as the left quote
           and the second as the right quoted; and if it is four characters,
           the first two are used as the left quote and the second two 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 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 true.
       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 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 must be properly declared unless it is US-ASCII or
           Latin-1.  POD input without an "=encoding" command will be assumed
           to be in Latin-1, and if it's actually in UTF-8, the output will be
           double-encoded.  See perlpod(1) for more information on the
           "=encoding" command.
       width
           The column at which to wrap text on the right-hand side.  Defaults
           to 76.
       The standard Pod::Simple method parse_file() takes one argument, the
       file or file handle to read from, and writes output to standard output
       unless that has been changed with the output_fh() method.  See
       Pod::Simple for the specific details and for other alternative
       interfaces.
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 one, two,
           or four 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 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 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 module written by Tom
       Christiansen.  It has a revamped interface, since it now uses
       Pod::Simple, 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
       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.
SEE ALSO
       Pod::Simple, Pod::Text::Termcap, perlpod(1), pod2text(1)
       The current version of this module 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 AT stanford.edu>, 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, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2009, 2012, 2013
       Russ Allbery <rra AT stanford.edu>.
       This program is free software; you may redistribute it and/or modify it
       under the same terms as Perl itself.

perl v5.16.3                      2013-01-02                      Pod::Text(3)