Pod::PlainText(3pm)

1Pod::PlainText(3)     User Contributed Perl Documentation    Pod::PlainText(3)
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NAME

6       Pod::PlainText - Convert POD data to formatted ASCII text
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SYNOPSIS

9           use Pod::PlainText;
10           my $parser = Pod::PlainText->new (sentence => 0, width => 78);
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12           # Read POD from STDIN and write to STDOUT.
13           $parser->parse_from_filehandle;
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15           # Read POD from file.pod and write to file.txt.
16           $parser->parse_from_file ('file.pod', 'file.txt');
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DESCRIPTION

19       NOTE: This module is considered legacy; modern Perl releases (5.31.1
20       and higher) are going to remove Pod-Parser from core and use
21       Pod::Simple for all things POD.
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23       Pod::PlainText is a module that can convert documentation in the POD
24       format (the preferred language for documenting Perl) into formatted
25       ASCII.  It uses no special formatting controls or codes whatsoever, and
26       its output is therefore suitable for nearly any device.
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28       As a derived class from Pod::Parser, Pod::PlainText supports the same
29       methods and interfaces.  See Pod::Parser for all the details; briefly,
30       one creates a new parser with "Pod::PlainText->new()" and then calls
31       either parse_from_filehandle() or parse_from_file().
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33       new() can take options, in the form of key/value pairs, that control
34       the behavior of the parser.  The currently recognized options are:
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36       alt If set to a true value, selects an alternate output format that,
37           among other things, uses a different heading style and marks
38           "=item" entries with a colon in the left margin.  Defaults to
39           false.
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41       indent
42           The number of spaces to indent regular text, and the default
43           indentation for "=over" blocks.  Defaults to 4.
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45       loose
46           If set to a true value, a blank line is printed after a "=headN"
47           headings.  If set to false (the default), no blank line is printed
48           after "=headN".  This is the default because it's the expected
49           formatting for manual pages; if you're formatting arbitrary text
50           documents, setting this to true may result in more pleasing output.
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52       sentence
53           If set to a true value, Pod::PlainText will assume that each
54           sentence ends in two spaces, and will try to preserve that spacing.
55           If set to false, all consecutive whitespace in non-verbatim
56           paragraphs is compressed into a single space.  Defaults to true.
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58       width
59           The column at which to wrap text on the right-hand side.  Defaults
60           to 76.
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62       The standard Pod::Parser method parse_from_filehandle() takes up to two
63       arguments, the first being the file handle to read POD from and the
64       second being the file handle to write the formatted output to.  The
65       first defaults to STDIN if not given, and the second defaults to
66       STDOUT.  The method parse_from_file() is almost identical, except that
67       its two arguments are the input and output disk files instead.  See
68       Pod::Parser for the specific details.
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DIAGNOSTICS

71       Bizarre space in item
72           (W) Something has gone wrong in internal "=item" processing.  This
73           message indicates a bug in Pod::PlainText; you should never see it.
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75       Can't open %s for reading: %s
76           (F) Pod::PlainText was invoked via the compatibility mode
77           pod2text() interface and the input file it was given could not be
78           opened.
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80       Unknown escape: %s
81           (W) The POD source contained an "E<>" escape that Pod::PlainText
82           didn't know about.
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84       Unknown sequence: %s
85           (W) The POD source contained a non-standard internal sequence
86           (something of the form "X<>") that Pod::PlainText didn't know
87           about.
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89       Unmatched =back
90           (W) Pod::PlainText encountered a "=back" command that didn't
91           correspond to an "=over" command.
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RESTRICTIONS

94       Embedded Ctrl-As (octal 001) in the input will be mapped to spaces on
95       output, due to an internal implementation detail.
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NOTES

98       This is a replacement for an earlier Pod::Text module written by Tom
99       Christiansen.  It has a revamped interface, since it now uses
100       Pod::Parser, but an interface roughly compatible with the old
101       Pod::Text::pod2text() function is still available.  Please change to
102       the new calling convention, though.
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104       The original Pod::Text contained code to do formatting via termcap
105       sequences, although it wasn't turned on by default and it was
106       problematic to get it to work at all.  This rewrite doesn't even try to
107       do that, but a subclass of it does.  Look for Pod::Text::Termcap.
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AUTHOR

115       Please report bugs using <http://rt.cpan.org>.
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117       Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu>, based very heavily on the original
118       Pod::Text by Tom Christiansen <tchrist@mox.perl.com> and its conversion
119       to Pod::Parser by Brad Appleton <bradapp@enteract.com>.
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123perl v5.36.0                      2022-07-22                 Pod::PlainText(3)