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



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 controls or codes whatso-ever, whatsoever,
       ever, and its output is therefore suitable for nearly any device.

       As a derived class from Pod::Parser, Pod::PlainText supports the same methods and interfaces.  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 dif-ferent different
           ferent heading style and marks "=item" entries with a colon in the left margin.  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 <rra@stanford.edu>, based very heavily on the original Pod::Text by Tom Christiansen
       <tchrist@mox.perl.com> and its conversion to Pod::Parser by Brad Appleton <bradapp@enteract.com>.



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