Pod::PlainText(3)                Perl Programmers Reference Guide               Pod::PlainText(3)



NAME
       Pod::PlainText - Convert POD data to formatted ASCII text

SYNOPSIS
           use Pod::PlainText;
           my $parser = Pod::PlainText->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::PlainText 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 con-
       trols or codes whatsoever, and its output is therefore suitable for nearly any device.

       As a derived class from Pod::Parser, Pod::PlainText supports the same methods and inter-
       faces.  See Pod::Parser for all the details; briefly, one creates a new parser with
       "Pod::PlainText->new()" and then calls either parse_from_filehandle() or
       parse_from_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 mar-
           gin.  Defaults to false.

       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.

       sentence
           If set to a true value, Pod::PlainText 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.

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

       The standard Pod::Parser method parse_from_filehandle() takes up to two arguments, the
       first being the file handle to read POD from and the second being the file handle to write
       the formatted output to.  The first defaults to STDIN if not given, and the second
       defaults to STDOUT.  The method parse_from_file() is almost identical, except that its two
       arguments are the input and output disk files instead.  See Pod::Parser for the specific
       details.

DIAGNOSTICS
       Bizarre space in item
           (W) Something has gone wrong in internal "=item" processing.  This message indicates a
           bug in Pod::PlainText; you should never see it.

       Can't open %s for reading: %s
           (F) Pod::PlainText was invoked via the compatibility mode pod2text() interface and the
           input file it was given could not be opened.

       Unknown escape: %s
           (W) The POD source contained an "E<>" escape that Pod::PlainText didn't know about.

       Unknown sequence: %s
           (W) The POD source contained a non-standard internal sequence (something of the form
           "X<>") that Pod::PlainText didn't know about.

       Unmatched =back
           (W) Pod::PlainText encountered a "=back" command that didn't correspond to an "=over"
           command.

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

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::Parser, 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::Parser, Pod::Text::Termcap, pod2text(1)

AUTHOR
       Please report bugs using <http://rt.cpan.org>.

       Russ Allbery <>, based very heavily on the original Pod::Text by Tom
       Christiansen <> and its conversion to Pod::Parser by Brad Appleton
       <>.



perl v5.8.8                                 2001-09-21                          Pod::PlainText(3)