pod2text
(1)
Name
pod2text - Convert POD data to formatted ASCII text
Synopsis
pod2text [-aclostu] [--code] [-i indent] [-q quotes]
[--stderr] [-w width] [input [output ...]]
pod2text -h
Description
Perl Programmers Reference Guide POD2TEXT(1)
NAME
pod2text - Convert POD data to formatted ASCII text
SYNOPSIS
pod2text [-aclostu] [--code] [-i indent] [-q quotes]
[--stderr] [-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". Several POD files can be
processed in the same pod2text invocation (saving module
load and compile times) by providing multiple pairs of input
and output files on the command line.
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
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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 overstrike 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.
--stderr
By default, pod2text puts any errors detected in the POD
input in a POD ERRORS section in the output manual page.
If --stderr is given, errors are sent to standard error
instead and the POD ERRORS section is suppressed.
-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
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your current terminal type.
-u, --utf8
By default, pod2text tries to use the same output
encoding as its input encoding (to be backward-
compatible with older versions). This option says to
instead force the output encoding 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.
-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::Simple
for information 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 terminal 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.
ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following
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attributes:
+---------------+------------------+
|ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE |
+---------------+------------------+
|Availability | runtime/perl-512 |
+---------------+------------------+
|Stability | Uncommitted |
+---------------+------------------+
SEE ALSO
Pod::Text, Pod::Text::Color, Pod::Text::Overstrike,
Pod::Text::Termcap, Pod::Simple, perlpod(1)
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 <[email protected]>.
COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
Copyright 1999, 2000, 2001, 2004, 2006, 2008 Russ Allbery
<[email protected]>.
This program is free software; you may redistribute it
and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.
NOTES
This software was built from source available at
https://java.net/projects/solaris-userland. The original
community source was downloaded from
http://www.cpan.org/src/5.0/perl-5.12.5.tar.bz2
Further information about this software can be found on the
open source community website at http://www.perl.org/.
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