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Pod::Man - Convert POD data to formatted *roff input |
Pod::Man - Convert POD data to formatted *roff input
use Pod::Man;
my $parser = Pod::Man->new (release => $VERSION, section => 8);
# Read POD from STDIN and write to STDOUT.
$parser->parse_from_filehandle;
# Read POD from file.pod and write to file.1.
$parser->parse_from_file ('file.pod', 'file.1');
Pod::Man is a module to convert documentation in the POD format (the preferred language for documenting Perl) into *roff input using the man macro set. The resulting *roff code is suitable for display on a terminal using nroff(1), normally via man(1), or printing using troff(1). It is conventionally invoked using the driver script pod2man, but it can also be used directly.
As a derived class from Pod::Parser, Pod::Man supports the same methods and
interfaces. See the Pod::Parser manpage for all the details; briefly, one creates a
new parser with Pod::Man->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. See below for details.
If no options are given, Pod::Man uses the name of the input file with any
trailing .pod, .pm, or .pl stripped as the man page title, to
section 1 unless the file ended in .pm in which case it defaults to
section 3, to a centered title of ``User Contributed Perl Documentation'', to
a centered footer of the Perl version it is run with, and to a left-hand
footer of the modification date of its input (or the current date if given
STDIN for input).
Pod::Man assumes that your *roff formatters have a fixed-width font named
CW. If yours is called something else (like CR), use the fixed option to
specify it. This generally only matters for troff output for printing.
Similarly, you can set the fonts used for bold, italic, and bold italic
fixed-width output.
Besides the obvious pod conversions, Pod::Man also takes care of formatting
func(), func(n), and simple variable references like $foo or @bar so you
don't have to use code escapes for them; complex expressions like
$fred{'stuff'} will still need to be escaped, though. It also translates
dashes that aren't used as hyphens into en dashes, makes long dashes--like
this--into proper em dashes, fixes ``paired quotes,'' makes C++ and PI look
right, puts a little space between double underbars, makes ALLCAPS a teeny
bit smaller in troff(1), and escapes stuff that *roff treats as special so
that you don't have to.
The recognized options to new() are as follows. All options take a single
argument.
stat() can't find that file (the
case if the input is from STDIN), and the date will be formatted as
YYYY-MM-DD.
troff(1) output.
troff(1) output.
troff(1) output.
troff(1)
output.
release to
the last modified date and date to the version number.
.TH macro. The standard section numbering
convention is to use 1 for user commands, 2 for system calls, 3 for
functions, 4 for devices, 5 for file formats, 6 for games, 7 for
miscellaneous information, and 8 for administrator commands. There is a lot
of variation here, however; some systems (like Solaris) use 4 for file
formats, 5 for miscellaneous information, and 7 for devices. Still others
use 1m instead of 8, or some mix of both. About the only section numbers
that are reliably consistent are 1, 2, and 3.
By default, section 1 will be used unless the file ends in .pm in which case section 3 will be selected.
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 the Pod::Parser manpage for the specific
details.
fixed, fixedbold, etc.) that
wasn't either one or two characters. Pod::Man doesn't support *roff fonts
longer than two characters, although some *roff extensions do (the canonical
versions of nroff(1) and troff(1) don't either).
L<> sequence that Pod::Man was
unable to parse. You should never see this error message; it probably
indicates a bug in Pod::Man.
E<> escape that Pod::Man didn't
know about. E<%s> was printed verbatim in the output.
X<>) that Pod::Man didn't know about. It was ignored.
=back command that didn't correspond to an
=over command.
The lint-like features and strict POD format checking done by pod2man are
not yet implemented and should be, along with the corresponding lax
option.
The NAME section should be recognized specially and index entries emitted for everything in that section. This would have to be deferred until the next section, since extraneous things in NAME tends to confuse various man page processors.
The handling of hyphens, en dashes, and em dashes is somewhat fragile, and
one may get the wrong one under some circumstances. This should only matter
for troff(1) output.
When and whether to use small caps is somewhat tricky, and Pod::Man doesn't necessarily get it right.
Pod::Man doesn't handle font names longer than two characters. Neither do
most troff(1) implementations, but GNU troff does as an extension. It would
be nice to support as an option for those who want to use it.
The preamble added to each output file is rather verbose, and most of it is only necessary in the presence of E<> escapes for non-ASCII characters. It would ideally be nice if all of those definitions were only output if needed, perhaps on the fly as the characters are used.
Some of the automagic applied to file names assumes Unix directory separators.
Pod::Man is excessively slow.
Pod::Parser, perlpod(1), pod2man(1), nroff(1), troff(1),
man(1), man(7)
Ossanna, Joseph F., and Brian W. Kernighan. ``Troff User's Manual,''
Computing Science Technical Report No. 54, AT&T Bell Laboratories. This is
the best documentation of standard nroff(1) and troff(1). At the time of
this writing, it's available at http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/cstr.html.
The man page documenting the man macro set may be man(5) instead of man(7)
on your system. Also, please see pod2man(1) for extensive documentation on
writing manual pages if you've not done it before and aren't familiar with
the conventions.
Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu>, based very heavily on the original pod2man by Tom Christiansen <tchrist@mox.perl.com>.
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Pod::Man - Convert POD data to formatted *roff input |