1Pod::Man(3) User Contributed Perl Documentation Pod::Man(3)
2
6 Pod::Man - Convert POD data to formatted *roff input
7
9 use Pod::Man;
10 my $parser = Pod::Man->new (release => $VERSION, section => 8);
11 # Read POD from STDIN and write to STDOUT.
13 $parser->parse_file (\*STDIN);
14 # Read POD from file.pod and write to file.1.
16 $parser->parse_from_file ('file.pod', 'file.1');
17
19 Pod::Man is a module to convert documentation in the POD format (the
20 preferred language for documenting Perl) into *roff input using the man
21 macro set. The resulting *roff code is suitable for display on a
22 terminal using nroff(1), normally via man(1), or printing using
23 troff(1). It is conventionally invoked using the driver script
24 pod2man, but it can also be used directly.
25 As a derived class from Pod::Simple, Pod::Man supports the same methods
27 and interfaces. See Pod::Simple for all the details.
28 new() can take options, in the form of key/value pairs that control the
30 behavior of the parser. See below for details.
31 If no options are given, Pod::Man uses the name of the input file with
33 any trailing ".pod", ".pm", or ".pl" stripped as the man page title, to
34 section 1 unless the file ended in ".pm" in which case it defaults to
35 section 3, to a centered title of "User Contributed Perl
36 Documentation", to a centered footer of the Perl version it is run
37 with, and to a left-hand footer of the modification date of its input
38 (or the current date if given "STDIN" for input).
39 Pod::Man assumes that your *roff formatters have a fixed-width font
41 named "CW". If yours is called something else (like "CR"), use the
42 "fixed" option to specify it. This generally only matters for troff
43 output for printing. Similarly, you can set the fonts used for bold,
44 italic, and bold italic fixed-width output.
45 Besides the obvious pod conversions, Pod::Man also takes care of
47 formatting func(), func(3), and simple variable references like $foo or
48 @bar so you don't have to use code escapes for them; complex
49 expressions like $fred{'stuff'} will still need to be escaped, though.
50 It also translates dashes that aren't used as hyphens into en dashes,
51 makes long dashes--like this--into proper em dashes, fixes "paired
52 quotes," makes C++ look right, puts a little space between double
53 underscores, makes ALLCAPS a teeny bit smaller in troff, and escapes
54 stuff that *roff treats as special so that you don't have to.
55 The recognized options to new() are as follows. All options take a
57 single argument.
58 center
60 Sets the centered page header for the ".TH" macro. The default, if
61 this option is not specified, is "User Contributed Perl
62 Documentation".
63 date
65 Sets the left-hand footer for the ".TH" macro. If this option is
66 not set, the contents of the environment variable POD_MAN_DATE, if
67 set, will be used. Failing that, the value of SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH,
68 the modification date of the input file, or the current time if
69 stat() can't find that file (which will be the case if the input is
70 from "STDIN") will be used. If obtained from the file modification
71 date or the current time, the date will be formatted as
72 "YYYY-MM-DD" and will be based on UTC (so that the output will be
73 reproducible regardless of local time zone).
74 errors
76 How to report errors. "die" says to throw an exception on any POD
77 formatting error. "stderr" says to report errors on standard
78 error, but not to throw an exception. "pod" says to include a POD
79 ERRORS section in the resulting documentation summarizing the
80 errors. "none" ignores POD errors entirely, as much as possible.
81 The default is "pod".
83 fixed
85 The fixed-width font to use for verbatim text and code. Defaults
86 to "CW". Some systems may want "CR" instead. Only matters for
87 troff output.
88 fixedbold
90 Bold version of the fixed-width font. Defaults to "CB". Only
91 matters for troff output.
92 fixeditalic
94 Italic version of the fixed-width font (actually, something of a
95 misnomer, since most fixed-width fonts only have an oblique
96 version, not an italic version). Defaults to "CI". Only matters
97 for troff output.
98 fixedbolditalic
100 Bold italic (probably actually oblique) version of the fixed-width
101 font. Pod::Man doesn't assume you have this, and defaults to "CB".
102 Some systems (such as Solaris) have this font available as "CX".
103 Only matters for troff output.
104 lquote
106 rquote
107 Sets the quote marks used to surround C<> text. "lquote" sets the
108 left quote mark and "rquote" sets the right quote mark. Either may
109 also be set to the special value "none", in which case no quote
110 mark is added on that side of C<> text (but the font is still
111 changed for troff output).
112 Also see the "quotes" option, which can be used to set both quotes
114 at once. If both "quotes" and one of the other options is set,
115 "lquote" or "rquote" overrides "quotes".
116 name
118 Set the name of the manual page for the ".TH" macro. Without this
119 option, the manual name is set to the uppercased base name of the
120 file being converted unless the manual section is 3, in which case
121 the path is parsed to see if it is a Perl module path. If it is, a
122 path like ".../lib/Pod/Man.pm" is converted into a name like
123 "Pod::Man". This option, if given, overrides any automatic
124 determination of the name.
125 If generating a manual page from standard input, the name will be
127 set to "STDIN" if this option is not provided. Providing this
128 option is strongly recommended to set a meaningful manual page
129 name.
130 nourls
132 Normally, L<> formatting codes with a URL but anchor text are
133 formatted to show both the anchor text and the URL. In other
134 words:
135 L<foo|http://example.com/>
137 is formatted as:
139 foo <http://example.com/>
141 This option, if set to a true value, suppresses the URL when anchor
143 text is given, so this example would be formatted as just "foo".
144 This can produce less cluttered output in cases where the URLs are
145 not particularly important.
146 quotes
148 Sets the quote marks used to surround C<> text. If the value is a
149 single character, it is used as both the left and right quote.
150 Otherwise, it is split in half, and the first half of the string is
151 used as the left quote and the second is used as the right quote.
152 This may also be set to the special value "none", in which case no
154 quote marks are added around C<> text (but the font is still
155 changed for troff output).
156 Also see the "lquote" and "rquote" options, which can be used to
158 set the left and right quotes independently. If both "quotes" and
159 one of the other options is set, "lquote" or "rquote" overrides
160 "quotes".
161 release
163 Set the centered footer for the ".TH" macro. By default, this is
164 set to the version of Perl you run Pod::Man under. Setting this to
165 the empty string will cause some *roff implementations to use the
166 system default value.
167 Note that some system "an" macro sets assume that the centered
169 footer will be a modification date and will prepend something like
170 "Last modified: ". If this is the case for your target system, you
171 may want to set "release" to the last modified date and "date" to
172 the version number.
173 section
175 Set the section for the ".TH" macro. The standard section
176 numbering convention is to use 1 for user commands, 2 for system
177 calls, 3 for functions, 4 for devices, 5 for file formats, 6 for
178 games, 7 for miscellaneous information, and 8 for administrator
179 commands. There is a lot of variation here, however; some systems
180 (like Solaris) use 4 for file formats, 5 for miscellaneous
181 information, and 7 for devices. Still others use 1m instead of 8,
182 or some mix of both. About the only section numbers that are
183 reliably consistent are 1, 2, and 3.
184 By default, section 1 will be used unless the file ends in ".pm" in
186 which case section 3 will be selected.
187 stderr
189 Send error messages about invalid POD to standard error instead of
190 appending a POD ERRORS section to the generated *roff output. This
191 is equivalent to setting "errors" to "stderr" if "errors" is not
192 already set. It is supported for backward compatibility.
193 utf8
195 By default, Pod::Man produces the most conservative possible *roff
196 output to try to ensure that it will work with as many different
197 *roff implementations as possible. Many *roff implementations
198 cannot handle non-ASCII characters, so this means all non-ASCII
199 characters are converted either to a *roff escape sequence that
200 tries to create a properly accented character (at least for troff
201 output) or to "X".
202 If this option is set, Pod::Man will instead output UTF-8. If your
204 *roff implementation can handle it, this is the best output format
205 to use and avoids corruption of documents containing non-ASCII
206 characters. However, be warned that *roff source with literal
207 UTF-8 characters is not supported by many implementations and may
208 even result in segfaults and other bad behavior.
209 Be aware that, when using this option, the input encoding of your
211 POD source should be properly declared unless it's US-ASCII.
212 Pod::Simple will attempt to guess the encoding and may be
213 successful if it's Latin-1 or UTF-8, but it will produce warnings.
214 Use the "=encoding" command to declare the encoding. See
215 perlpod(1) for more information.
216 The standard Pod::Simple method parse_file() takes one argument naming
218 the POD file to read from. By default, the output is sent to "STDOUT",
219 but this can be changed with the output_fh() method.
220 The standard Pod::Simple method parse_from_file() takes up to two
222 arguments, the first being the input file to read POD from and the
223 second being the file to write the formatted output to.
224 You can also call parse_lines() to parse an array of lines or
226 parse_string_document() to parse a document already in memory. As with
227 parse_file(), parse_lines() and parse_string_document() default to
228 sending their output to "STDOUT" unless changed with the output_fh()
229 method. Be aware that parse_lines() and parse_string_document() both
230 expect raw bytes, not decoded characters.
231 To put the output from any parse method into a string instead of a file
233 handle, call the output_string() method instead of output_fh().
234 See Pod::Simple for more specific details on the methods available to
236 all derived parsers.
237
239 roff font should be 1 or 2 chars, not "%s"
240 (F) You specified a *roff font (using "fixed", "fixedbold", etc.)
241 that wasn't either one or two characters. Pod::Man doesn't support
242 *roff fonts longer than two characters, although some *roff
243 extensions do (the canonical versions of nroff and troff don't
244 either).
245 Invalid errors setting "%s"
247 (F) The "errors" parameter to the constructor was set to an unknown
248 value.
249 Invalid quote specification "%s"
251 (F) The quote specification given (the "quotes" option to the
252 constructor) was invalid. A quote specification must be either one
253 character long or an even number (greater than one) characters
254 long.
255 POD document had syntax errors
257 (F) The POD document being formatted had syntax errors and the
258 "errors" option was set to "die".
259
261 PERL_CORE
262 If set and Encode is not available, silently fall back to non-UTF-8
263 mode without complaining to standard error. This environment
264 variable is set during Perl core builds, which build Encode after
265 podlators. Encode is expected to not (yet) be available in that
266 case.
267 POD_MAN_DATE
269 If set, this will be used as the value of the left-hand footer
270 unless the "date" option is explicitly set, overriding the
271 timestamp of the input file or the current time. This is primarily
272 useful to ensure reproducible builds of the same output file given
273 the same source and Pod::Man version, even when file timestamps may
274 not be consistent.
275 SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH
277 If set, and POD_MAN_DATE and the "date" options are not set, this
278 will be used as the modification time of the source file,
279 overriding the timestamp of the input file or the current time. It
280 should be set to the desired time in seconds since UNIX epoch.
281 This is primarily useful to ensure reproducible builds of the same
282 output file given the same source and Pod::Man version, even when
283 file timestamps may not be consistent. See
284 <https://reproducible-builds.org/specs/source-date-epoch/> for the
285 full specification.
286 (Arguably, according to the specification, this variable should be
288 used only if the timestamp of the input file is not available and
289 Pod::Man uses the current time. However, for reproducible builds
290 in Debian, results were more reliable if this variable overrode the
291 timestamp of the input file.)
292
294 Encoding handling assumes that PerlIO is available and does not work
295 properly if it isn't. The "utf8" option is therefore not supported
296 unless Perl is built with PerlIO support.
297 There is currently no way to turn off the guesswork that tries to
299 format unmarked text appropriately, and sometimes it isn't wanted
300 (particularly when using POD to document something other than Perl).
301 Most of the work toward fixing this has now been done, however, and all
302 that's still needed is a user interface.
303 The NAME section should be recognized specially and index entries
305 emitted for everything in that section. This would have to be deferred
306 until the next section, since extraneous things in NAME tends to
307 confuse various man page processors. Currently, no index entries are
308 emitted for anything in NAME.
309 Pod::Man doesn't handle font names longer than two characters. Neither
311 do most troff implementations, but GNU troff does as an extension. It
312 would be nice to support as an option for those who want to use it.
313 The preamble added to each output file is rather verbose, and most of
315 it is only necessary in the presence of non-ASCII characters. It would
316 ideally be nice if all of those definitions were only output if needed,
317 perhaps on the fly as the characters are used.
318 Pod::Man is excessively slow.
320
322 If Pod::Man is given the "utf8" option, the encoding of its output file
323 handle will be forced to UTF-8 if possible, overriding any existing
324 encoding. This will be done even if the file handle is not created by
325 Pod::Man and was passed in from outside. This maintains consistency
326 regardless of PERL_UNICODE and other settings.
327 The handling of hyphens and em dashes is somewhat fragile, and one may
329 get the wrong one under some circumstances. This should only matter
330 for troff output.
331 When and whether to use small caps is somewhat tricky, and Pod::Man
333 doesn't necessarily get it right.
334 Converting neutral double quotes to properly matched double quotes
336 doesn't work unless there are no formatting codes between the quote
337 marks. This only matters for troff output.
338
340 Russ Allbery <rra@cpan.org>, based very heavily on the original pod2man
341 by Tom Christiansen <tchrist@mox.perl.com>. The modifications to work
342 with Pod::Simple instead of Pod::Parser were originally contributed by
343 Sean Burke <sburke@cpan.org> (but I've since hacked them beyond
344 recognition and all bugs are mine).
345
347 Copyright 1999-2010, 2012-2019 Russ Allbery <rra@cpan.org>
348 Substantial contributions by Sean Burke <sburke@cpan.org>.
350 This program is free software; you may redistribute it and/or modify it
352 under the same terms as Perl itself.
353
355 Pod::Simple, perlpod(1), pod2man(1), nroff(1), troff(1), man(1), man(7)
356 Ossanna, Joseph F., and Brian W. Kernighan. "Troff User's Manual,"
358 Computing Science Technical Report No. 54, AT&T Bell Laboratories.
359 This is the best documentation of standard nroff and troff. At the
360 time of this writing, it's available at <http://www.troff.org/54.pdf>.
361 The man page documenting the man macro set may be man(5) instead of
363 man(7) on your system. Also, please see pod2man(1) for extensive
364 documentation on writing manual pages if you've not done it before and
365 aren't familiar with the conventions.
366 The current version of this module is always available from its web
368 site at <https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/software/podlators/>. It is also
369 part of the Perl core distribution as of 5.6.0.
370perl v5.34.0 2021-07-23 Pod::Man(3)