1 # Pod::Text -- Convert POD data to formatted ASCII text.
3 # Copyright 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2009
4 # Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu>
6 # This program is free software; you may redistribute it and/or modify it
7 # under the same terms as Perl itself.
9 # This module converts POD to formatted text. It replaces the old Pod::Text
10 # module that came with versions of Perl prior to 5.6.0 and attempts to match
11 # its output except for some specific circumstances where other decisions
12 # seemed to produce better output. It uses Pod::Parser and is designed to be
13 # very easy to subclass.
15 # Perl core hackers, please note that this module is also separately
16 # maintained outside of the Perl core as part of the podlators. Please send
17 # me any patches at the address above in addition to sending them to the
18 # standard Perl mailing lists.
20 ##############################################################################
21 # Modules and declarations
22 ##############################################################################
29 use vars qw(@ISA @EXPORT %ESCAPES $VERSION);
31 use Carp qw(carp croak);
35 @ISA = qw(Pod::Simple Exporter);
37 # We have to export pod2text for backward compatibility.
38 @EXPORT = qw(pod2text);
42 ##############################################################################
44 ##############################################################################
46 # This function handles code blocks. It's registered as a callback to
47 # Pod::Simple and therefore doesn't work as a regular method call, but all it
48 # does is call output_code with the line.
50 my ($line, $number, $parser) = @_;
51 $parser->output_code ($line . "\n");
54 # Initialize the object and set various Pod::Simple options that we need.
55 # Here, we also process any additional options passed to the constructor or
56 # set up defaults if none were given. Note that all internal object keys are
57 # in all-caps, reserving all lower-case object keys for Pod::Simple and user
61 my $self = $class->SUPER::new;
63 # Tell Pod::Simple to handle S<> by automatically inserting .
64 $self->nbsp_for_S (1);
66 # Tell Pod::Simple to keep whitespace whenever possible.
67 if ($self->can ('preserve_whitespace')) {
68 $self->preserve_whitespace (1);
70 $self->fullstop_space_harden (1);
73 # The =for and =begin targets that we accept.
74 $self->accept_targets (qw/text TEXT/);
76 # Ensure that contiguous blocks of code are merged together. Otherwise,
77 # some of the guesswork heuristics don't work right.
78 $self->merge_text (1);
80 # Pod::Simple doesn't do anything useful with our arguments, but we want
81 # to put them in our object as hash keys and values. This could cause
82 # problems if we ever clash with Pod::Simple's own internal class
85 my @opts = map { ("opt_$_", $opts{$_}) } keys %opts;
86 %$self = (%$self, @opts);
88 # Send errors to stderr if requested.
89 if ($$self{opt_stderr}) {
90 $self->no_errata_section (1);
91 $self->complain_stderr (1);
92 delete $$self{opt_stderr};
95 # Initialize various things from our parameters.
96 $$self{opt_alt} = 0 unless defined $$self{opt_alt};
97 $$self{opt_indent} = 4 unless defined $$self{opt_indent};
98 $$self{opt_margin} = 0 unless defined $$self{opt_margin};
99 $$self{opt_loose} = 0 unless defined $$self{opt_loose};
100 $$self{opt_sentence} = 0 unless defined $$self{opt_sentence};
101 $$self{opt_width} = 76 unless defined $$self{opt_width};
103 # Figure out what quotes we'll be using for C<> text.
104 $$self{opt_quotes} ||= '"';
105 if ($$self{opt_quotes} eq 'none') {
106 $$self{LQUOTE} = $$self{RQUOTE} = '';
107 } elsif (length ($$self{opt_quotes}) == 1) {
108 $$self{LQUOTE} = $$self{RQUOTE} = $$self{opt_quotes};
109 } elsif ($$self{opt_quotes} =~ /^(.)(.)$/
110 || $$self{opt_quotes} =~ /^(..)(..)$/) {
114 croak qq(Invalid quote specification "$$self{opt_quotes}");
117 # If requested, do something with the non-POD text.
118 $self->code_handler (\&handle_code) if $$self{opt_code};
120 # Return the created object.
124 ##############################################################################
126 ##############################################################################
128 # This is the glue that connects the code below with Pod::Simple itself. The
129 # goal is to convert the event stream coming from the POD parser into method
130 # calls to handlers once the complete content of a tag has been seen. Each
131 # paragraph or POD command will have textual content associated with it, and
132 # as soon as all of a paragraph or POD command has been seen, that content
133 # will be passed in to the corresponding method for handling that type of
134 # object. The exceptions are handlers for lists, which have opening tag
135 # handlers and closing tag handlers that will be called right away.
137 # The internal hash key PENDING is used to store the contents of a tag until
138 # all of it has been seen. It holds a stack of open tags, each one
139 # represented by a tuple of the attributes hash for the tag and the contents
142 # Add a block of text to the contents of the current node, formatting it
143 # according to the current formatting instructions as we do.
145 my ($self, $text) = @_;
146 my $tag = $$self{PENDING}[-1];
150 # Given an element name, get the corresponding method name.
151 sub method_for_element {
152 my ($self, $element) = @_;
154 $element =~ tr/A-Z/a-z/;
155 $element =~ tr/_a-z0-9//cd;
159 # Handle the start of a new element. If cmd_element is defined, assume that
160 # we need to collect the entire tree for this element before passing it to the
161 # element method, and create a new tree into which we'll collect blocks of
162 # text and nested elements. Otherwise, if start_element is defined, call it.
163 sub _handle_element_start {
164 my ($self, $element, $attrs) = @_;
165 my $method = $self->method_for_element ($element);
167 # If we have a command handler, we need to accumulate the contents of the
168 # tag before calling it.
169 if ($self->can ("cmd_$method")) {
170 push (@{ $$self{PENDING} }, [ $attrs, '' ]);
171 } elsif ($self->can ("start_$method")) {
172 my $method = 'start_' . $method;
173 $self->$method ($attrs, '');
177 # Handle the end of an element. If we had a cmd_ method for this element,
178 # this is where we pass along the text that we've accumulated. Otherwise, if
179 # we have an end_ method for the element, call that.
180 sub _handle_element_end {
181 my ($self, $element) = @_;
182 my $method = $self->method_for_element ($element);
184 # If we have a command handler, pull off the pending text and pass it to
185 # the handler along with the saved attribute hash.
186 if ($self->can ("cmd_$method")) {
187 my $tag = pop @{ $$self{PENDING} };
188 my $method = 'cmd_' . $method;
189 my $text = $self->$method (@$tag);
191 if (@{ $$self{PENDING} } > 1) {
192 $$self{PENDING}[-1][1] .= $text;
194 $self->output ($text);
197 } elsif ($self->can ("end_$method")) {
198 my $method = 'end_' . $method;
203 ##############################################################################
205 ##############################################################################
207 # Wrap a line, indenting by the current left margin. We can't use Text::Wrap
208 # because it plays games with tabs. We can't use formline, even though we'd
209 # really like to, because it screws up non-printing characters. So we have to
210 # do the wrapping ourselves.
215 my $spaces = ' ' x $$self{MARGIN};
216 my $width = $$self{opt_width} - $$self{MARGIN};
217 while (length > $width) {
218 if (s/^([^\n]{0,$width})\s+// || s/^([^\n]{$width})//) {
219 $output .= $spaces . $1 . "\n";
224 $output .= $spaces . $_;
225 $output =~ s/\s+$/\n\n/;
229 # Reformat a paragraph of text for the current margin. Takes the text to
230 # reformat and returns the formatted text.
235 # If we're trying to preserve two spaces after sentences, do some munging
236 # to support that. Otherwise, smash all repeated whitespace.
237 if ($$self{opt_sentence}) {
245 return $self->wrap ($_);
248 # Output text to the output device. Replace non-breaking spaces with spaces
249 # and soft hyphens with nothing, and then try to fix the output encoding if
250 # necessary to match the input encoding unless UTF-8 output is forced. This
251 # preserves the traditional pass-through behavior of Pod::Text.
253 my ($self, $text) = @_;
254 $text =~ tr/\240\255/ /d;
255 unless ($$self{opt_utf8} || $$self{CHECKED_ENCODING}) {
256 my $encoding = $$self{encoding} || '';
258 eval { binmode ($$self{output_fh}, ":encoding($encoding)") };
260 $$self{CHECKED_ENCODING} = 1;
262 print { $$self{output_fh} } $text;
265 # Output a block of code (something that isn't part of the POD text). Called
266 # by preprocess_paragraph only if we were given the code option. Exists here
267 # only so that it can be overridden by subclasses.
268 sub output_code { $_[0]->output ($_[1]) }
270 ##############################################################################
271 # Document initialization
272 ##############################################################################
274 # Set up various things that have to be initialized on a per-document basis.
277 my $margin = $$self{opt_indent} + $$self{opt_margin};
279 # Initialize a few per-document variables.
280 $$self{INDENTS} = []; # Stack of indentations.
281 $$self{MARGIN} = $margin; # Default left margin.
282 $$self{PENDING} = [[]]; # Pending output.
284 # We have to redo encoding handling for each document.
285 delete $$self{CHECKED_ENCODING};
287 # If we were given the utf8 option, set an output encoding on our file
288 # handle. Wrap in an eval in case we're using a version of Perl too old
289 # to understand this.
291 # This is evil because it changes the global state of a file handle that
292 # we may not own. However, we can't just blindly encode all output, since
293 # there may be a pre-applied output encoding (such as from PERL_UNICODE)
294 # and then we would double-encode. This seems to be the least bad
296 if ($$self{opt_utf8}) {
297 eval { binmode ($$self{output_fh}, ':encoding(UTF-8)') };
303 ##############################################################################
305 ##############################################################################
307 # Intended for subclasses to override, this method returns text with any
308 # non-printing formatting codes stripped out so that length() correctly
309 # returns the length of the text. For basic Pod::Text, it does nothing.
311 my ($self, $string) = @_;
315 # This method is called whenever an =item command is complete (in other words,
316 # we've seen its associated paragraph or know for certain that it doesn't have
317 # one). It gets the paragraph associated with the item as an argument. If
318 # that argument is empty, just output the item tag; if it contains a newline,
319 # output the item tag followed by the newline. Otherwise, see if there's
320 # enough room for us to output the item tag in the margin of the text or if we
321 # have to put it on a separate line.
323 my ($self, $text) = @_;
324 my $tag = $$self{ITEM};
325 unless (defined $tag) {
326 carp "Item called without tag";
331 # Calculate the indentation and margin. $fits is set to true if the tag
332 # will fit into the margin of the paragraph given our indentation level.
333 my $indent = $$self{INDENTS}[-1];
334 $indent = $$self{opt_indent} unless defined $indent;
335 my $margin = ' ' x $$self{opt_margin};
336 my $tag_length = length ($self->strip_format ($tag));
337 my $fits = ($$self{MARGIN} - $indent >= $tag_length + 1);
339 # If the tag doesn't fit, or if we have no associated text, print out the
340 # tag separately. Otherwise, put the tag in the margin of the paragraph.
341 if (!$text || $text =~ /^\s+$/ || !$fits) {
342 my $realindent = $$self{MARGIN};
343 $$self{MARGIN} = $indent;
344 my $output = $self->reformat ($tag);
345 $output =~ s/^$margin /$margin:/ if ($$self{opt_alt} && $indent > 0);
346 $output =~ s/\n*$/\n/;
348 # If the text is just whitespace, we have an empty item paragraph;
349 # this can result from =over/=item/=back without any intermixed
350 # paragraphs. Insert some whitespace to keep the =item from merging
351 # into the next paragraph.
352 $output .= "\n" if $text && $text =~ /^\s*$/;
354 $self->output ($output);
355 $$self{MARGIN} = $realindent;
356 $self->output ($self->reformat ($text)) if ($text && $text =~ /\S/);
358 my $space = ' ' x $indent;
359 $space =~ s/^$margin /$margin:/ if $$self{opt_alt};
360 $text = $self->reformat ($text);
361 $text =~ s/^$margin /$margin:/ if ($$self{opt_alt} && $indent > 0);
362 my $tagspace = ' ' x $tag_length;
363 $text =~ s/^($space)$tagspace/$1$tag/ or warn "Bizarre space in item";
364 $self->output ($text);
368 # Handle a basic block of text. The only tricky thing here is that if there
369 # is a pending item tag, we need to format this as an item paragraph.
371 my ($self, $attrs, $text) = @_;
373 if (defined $$self{ITEM}) {
374 $self->item ($text . "\n");
376 $self->output ($self->reformat ($text . "\n"));
381 # Handle a verbatim paragraph. Just print it out, but indent it according to
384 my ($self, $attrs, $text) = @_;
385 $self->item if defined $$self{ITEM};
386 return if $text =~ /^\s*$/;
387 $text =~ s/^(\n*)([ \t]*\S+)/$1 . (' ' x $$self{MARGIN}) . $2/gme;
388 $text =~ s/\s*$/\n\n/;
389 $self->output ($text);
393 # Handle literal text (produced by =for and similar constructs). Just output
394 # it with the minimum of changes.
396 my ($self, $attrs, $text) = @_;
398 $text =~ s/\n{0,2}$/\n/;
399 $self->output ($text);
403 ##############################################################################
405 ##############################################################################
407 # The common code for handling all headers. Takes the header text, the
408 # indentation, and the surrounding marker for the alt formatting method.
410 my ($self, $text, $indent, $marker) = @_;
411 $self->item ("\n\n") if defined $$self{ITEM};
413 if ($$self{opt_alt}) {
414 my $closemark = reverse (split (//, $marker));
415 my $margin = ' ' x $$self{opt_margin};
416 $self->output ("\n" . "$margin$marker $text $closemark" . "\n\n");
418 $text .= "\n" if $$self{opt_loose};
419 my $margin = ' ' x ($$self{opt_margin} + $indent);
420 $self->output ($margin . $text . "\n");
425 # First level heading.
427 my ($self, $attrs, $text) = @_;
428 $self->heading ($text, 0, '====');
431 # Second level heading.
433 my ($self, $attrs, $text) = @_;
434 $self->heading ($text, $$self{opt_indent} / 2, '== ');
437 # Third level heading.
439 my ($self, $attrs, $text) = @_;
440 $self->heading ($text, $$self{opt_indent} * 2 / 3 + 0.5, '= ');
443 # Fourth level heading.
445 my ($self, $attrs, $text) = @_;
446 $self->heading ($text, $$self{opt_indent} * 3 / 4 + 0.5, '- ');
449 ##############################################################################
451 ##############################################################################
453 # Handle the beginning of an =over block. Takes the type of the block as the
454 # first argument, and then the attr hash. This is called by the handlers for
455 # the four different types of lists (bullet, number, text, and block).
456 sub over_common_start {
457 my ($self, $attrs) = @_;
458 $self->item ("\n\n") if defined $$self{ITEM};
460 # Find the indentation level.
461 my $indent = $$attrs{indent};
462 unless (defined ($indent) && $indent =~ /^\s*[-+]?\d{1,4}\s*$/) {
463 $indent = $$self{opt_indent};
466 # Add this to our stack of indents and increase our current margin.
467 push (@{ $$self{INDENTS} }, $$self{MARGIN});
468 $$self{MARGIN} += ($indent + 0);
472 # End an =over block. Takes no options other than the class pointer. Output
473 # any pending items and then pop one level of indentation.
474 sub over_common_end {
476 $self->item ("\n\n") if defined $$self{ITEM};
477 $$self{MARGIN} = pop @{ $$self{INDENTS} };
481 # Dispatch the start and end calls as appropriate.
482 sub start_over_bullet { $_[0]->over_common_start ($_[1]) }
483 sub start_over_number { $_[0]->over_common_start ($_[1]) }
484 sub start_over_text { $_[0]->over_common_start ($_[1]) }
485 sub start_over_block { $_[0]->over_common_start ($_[1]) }
486 sub end_over_bullet { $_[0]->over_common_end }
487 sub end_over_number { $_[0]->over_common_end }
488 sub end_over_text { $_[0]->over_common_end }
489 sub end_over_block { $_[0]->over_common_end }
491 # The common handler for all item commands. Takes the type of the item, the
492 # attributes, and then the text of the item.
494 my ($self, $type, $attrs, $text) = @_;
495 $self->item if defined $$self{ITEM};
497 # Clean up the text. We want to end up with two variables, one ($text)
498 # which contains any body text after taking out the item portion, and
499 # another ($item) which contains the actual item text. Note the use of
500 # the internal Pod::Simple attribute here; that's a potential land mine.
503 if ($type eq 'bullet') {
505 } elsif ($type eq 'number') {
506 $item = $$attrs{'~orig_content'};
509 $item =~ s/\s*\n\s*/ /g;
512 $$self{ITEM} = $item;
514 # If body text for this item was included, go ahead and output that now.
522 # Dispatch the item commands to the appropriate place.
523 sub cmd_item_bullet { my $self = shift; $self->item_common ('bullet', @_) }
524 sub cmd_item_number { my $self = shift; $self->item_common ('number', @_) }
525 sub cmd_item_text { my $self = shift; $self->item_common ('text', @_) }
526 sub cmd_item_block { my $self = shift; $self->item_common ('block', @_) }
528 ##############################################################################
530 ##############################################################################
533 sub cmd_b { return $_[0]{alt} ? "``$_[2]''" : $_[2] }
534 sub cmd_f { return $_[0]{alt} ? "\"$_[2]\"" : $_[2] }
535 sub cmd_i { return '*' . $_[2] . '*' }
536 sub cmd_x { return '' }
538 # Apply a whole bunch of messy heuristics to not quote things that don't
539 # benefit from being quoted. These originally come from Barrie Slaymaker and
540 # largely duplicate code in Pod::Man.
542 my ($self, $attrs, $text) = @_;
544 # A regex that matches the portion of a variable reference that's the
545 # array or hash index, separated out just because we want to use it in
546 # several places in the following regex.
547 my $index = '(?: \[.*\] | \{.*\} )?';
549 # Check for things that we don't want to quote, and if we find any of
550 # them, return the string with just a font change and no quoting.
554 ( [\'\`\"] ) .* \1 # already quoted
555 | \` .* \' # `quoted'
556 | \$+ [\#^]? \S $index # special ($^Foo, $")
557 | [\$\@%&*]+ \#? [:\'\w]+ $index # plain var or func
558 | [\$\@%&*]* [:\'\w]+ (?: -> )? \(\s*[^\s,]\s*\) # 0/1-arg func call
559 | [+-]? ( \d[\d.]* | \.\d+ ) (?: [eE][+-]?\d+ )? # a number
560 | 0x [a-fA-F\d]+ # a hex constant
565 # If we didn't return, go ahead and quote the text.
566 return $$self{opt_alt}
568 : "$$self{LQUOTE}$text$$self{RQUOTE}";
571 # Links reduce to the text that we're given, wrapped in angle brackets if it's
574 my ($self, $attrs, $text) = @_;
575 if ($$attrs{type} eq 'url') {
576 if (not defined($$attrs{to}) or $$attrs{to} eq $text) {
579 return "$text <$$attrs{to}>";
586 ##############################################################################
587 # Backwards compatibility
588 ##############################################################################
590 # The old Pod::Text module did everything in a pod2text() function. This
591 # tries to provide the same interface for legacy applications.
595 # This is really ugly; I hate doing option parsing in the middle of a
596 # module. But the old Pod::Text module supported passing flags to its
597 # entry function, so handle -a and -<number>.
598 while ($_[0] =~ /^-/) {
600 if ($flag eq '-a') { push (@args, alt => 1) }
601 elsif ($flag =~ /^-(\d+)$/) { push (@args, width => $1) }
608 # Now that we know what arguments we're using, create the parser.
609 my $parser = Pod::Text->new (@args);
611 # If two arguments were given, the second argument is going to be a file
612 # handle. That means we want to call parse_from_filehandle(), which means
613 # we need to turn the first argument into a file handle. Magic open will
614 # handle the <&STDIN case automagically.
618 unless (open (IN, $fhs[0])) {
619 croak ("Can't open $fhs[0] for reading: $!\n");
623 $parser->output_fh ($fhs[1]);
624 my $retval = $parser->parse_file ($fhs[0]);
625 my $fh = $parser->output_fh ();
629 $parser->output_fh (\*STDOUT);
630 return $parser->parse_file (@_);
634 # Reset the underlying Pod::Simple object between calls to parse_from_file so
635 # that the same object can be reused to convert multiple pages.
636 sub parse_from_file {
640 # Fake the old cutting option to Pod::Parser. This fiddings with internal
641 # Pod::Simple state and is quite ugly; we need a better approach.
642 if (ref ($_[0]) eq 'HASH') {
644 if (defined ($$opts{-cutting}) && !$$opts{-cutting}) {
646 $$self{last_was_blank} = 1;
651 my $retval = $self->Pod::Simple::parse_from_file (@_);
653 # Flush output, since Pod::Simple doesn't do this. Ideally we should also
654 # close the file descriptor if we had to open one, but we can't easily
656 my $fh = $self->output_fh ();
657 my $oldfh = select $fh;
666 # Pod::Simple failed to provide this backward compatibility function, so
667 # implement it ourselves. File handles are one of the inputs that
668 # parse_from_file supports.
669 sub parse_from_filehandle {
671 $self->parse_from_file (@_);
674 ##############################################################################
675 # Module return value and documentation
676 ##############################################################################
683 Pod::Text - Convert POD data to formatted ASCII text
686 alt stderr Allbery Sean Burke's Christiansen UTF-8 pre-Unicode utf8
691 my $parser = Pod::Text->new (sentence => 0, width => 78);
693 # Read POD from STDIN and write to STDOUT.
694 $parser->parse_from_filehandle;
696 # Read POD from file.pod and write to file.txt.
697 $parser->parse_from_file ('file.pod', 'file.txt');
701 Pod::Text is a module that can convert documentation in the POD format (the
702 preferred language for documenting Perl) into formatted ASCII. It uses no
703 special formatting controls or codes whatsoever, and its output is therefore
704 suitable for nearly any device.
706 As a derived class from Pod::Simple, Pod::Text supports the same methods and
707 interfaces. See L<Pod::Simple> for all the details; briefly, one creates a
708 new parser with C<< Pod::Text->new() >> and then normally calls parse_file().
710 new() can take options, in the form of key/value pairs, that control the
711 behavior of the parser. The currently recognized options are:
717 If set to a true value, selects an alternate output format that, among other
718 things, uses a different heading style and marks C<=item> entries with a
719 colon in the left margin. Defaults to false.
723 If set to a true value, the non-POD parts of the input file will be included
724 in the output. Useful for viewing code documented with POD blocks with the
725 POD rendered and the code left intact.
729 The number of spaces to indent regular text, and the default indentation for
730 C<=over> blocks. Defaults to 4.
734 If set to a true value, a blank line is printed after a C<=head1> heading.
735 If set to false (the default), no blank line is printed after C<=head1>,
736 although one is still printed after C<=head2>. This is the default because
737 it's the expected formatting for manual pages; if you're formatting
738 arbitrary text documents, setting this to true may result in more pleasing
743 The width of the left margin in spaces. Defaults to 0. This is the margin
744 for all text, including headings, not the amount by which regular text is
745 indented; for the latter, see the I<indent> option. To set the right
746 margin, see the I<width> option.
750 Sets the quote marks used to surround CE<lt>> text. If the value is a
751 single character, it is used as both the left and right quote; if it is two
752 characters, the first character is used as the left quote and the second as
753 the right quoted; and if it is four characters, the first two are used as
754 the left quote and the second two as the right quote.
756 This may also be set to the special value C<none>, in which case no quote
757 marks are added around CE<lt>> text.
761 If set to a true value, Pod::Text will assume that each sentence ends in two
762 spaces, and will try to preserve that spacing. If set to false, all
763 consecutive whitespace in non-verbatim paragraphs is compressed into a
764 single space. Defaults to true.
768 Send error messages about invalid POD to standard error instead of
769 appending a POD ERRORS section to the generated output.
773 By default, Pod::Text uses the same output encoding as the input encoding
774 of the POD source (provided that Perl was built with PerlIO; otherwise, it
775 doesn't encode its output). If this option is given, the output encoding
778 Be aware that, when using this option, the input encoding of your POD
779 source must be properly declared unless it is US-ASCII or Latin-1. POD
780 input without an C<=encoding> command will be assumed to be in Latin-1,
781 and if it's actually in UTF-8, the output will be double-encoded. See
782 L<perlpod(1)> for more information on the C<=encoding> command.
786 The column at which to wrap text on the right-hand side. Defaults to 76.
790 The standard Pod::Simple method parse_file() takes one argument, the file or
791 file handle to read from, and writes output to standard output unless that
792 has been changed with the output_fh() method. See L<Pod::Simple> for the
793 specific details and for other alternative interfaces.
799 =item Bizarre space in item
801 =item Item called without tag
803 (W) Something has gone wrong in internal C<=item> processing. These
804 messages indicate a bug in Pod::Text; you should never see them.
806 =item Can't open %s for reading: %s
808 (F) Pod::Text was invoked via the compatibility mode pod2text() interface
809 and the input file it was given could not be opened.
811 =item Invalid quote specification "%s"
813 (F) The quote specification given (the quotes option to the constructor) was
814 invalid. A quote specification must be one, two, or four characters long.
820 Encoding handling assumes that PerlIO is available and does not work
821 properly if it isn't. The C<utf8> option is therefore not supported
822 unless Perl is built with PerlIO support.
826 If Pod::Text is given the C<utf8> option, the encoding of its output file
827 handle will be forced to UTF-8 if possible, overriding any existing
828 encoding. This will be done even if the file handle is not created by
829 Pod::Text and was passed in from outside. This maintains consistency
830 regardless of PERL_UNICODE and other settings.
832 If the C<utf8> option is not given, the encoding of its output file handle
833 will be forced to the detected encoding of the input POD, which preserves
834 whatever the input text is. This ensures backward compatibility with
835 earlier, pre-Unicode versions of this module, without large numbers of
838 This is not ideal, but it seems to be the best compromise. If it doesn't
839 work for you, please let me know the details of how it broke.
843 This is a replacement for an earlier Pod::Text module written by Tom
844 Christiansen. It has a revamped interface, since it now uses Pod::Simple,
845 but an interface roughly compatible with the old Pod::Text::pod2text()
846 function is still available. Please change to the new calling convention,
849 The original Pod::Text contained code to do formatting via termcap
850 sequences, although it wasn't turned on by default and it was problematic to
851 get it to work at all. This rewrite doesn't even try to do that, but a
852 subclass of it does. Look for L<Pod::Text::Termcap>.
856 L<Pod::Simple>, L<Pod::Text::Termcap>, L<perlpod(1)>, L<pod2text(1)>
858 The current version of this module is always available from its web site at
859 L<http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/software/podlators/>. It is also part of the
860 Perl core distribution as of 5.6.0.
864 Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu>, based I<very> heavily on the original
865 Pod::Text by Tom Christiansen <tchrist@mox.perl.com> and its conversion to
866 Pod::Parser by Brad Appleton <bradapp@enteract.com>. Sean Burke's initial
867 conversion of Pod::Man to use Pod::Simple provided much-needed guidance on
868 how to use Pod::Simple.
870 =head1 COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
872 Copyright 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2009 Russ Allbery
875 This program is free software; you may redistribute it and/or modify it
876 under the same terms as Perl itself.