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Pod::Man(3)
NAME
Pod::Man - Convert POD data to formatted *roff input
SYNOPSIS
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');
DESCRIPTION
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.
center
Sets the centered page header to use instead of "User Contributed Perl
Documentation".
date
Sets the left-hand footer. By default, the modification date of the
input file will be used, or the current date if stat() can't find that
file (the case if the input is from STDIN), and the date will be
formatted as YYYY-MM-DD.
fixed
The fixed-width font to use for vertabim text and code. Defaults to
CW. Some systems may want CR instead. Only matters for troff(1)
output.
fixedbold
Bold version of the fixed-width font. Defaults to CB. Only matters
for troff(1) output.
fixeditalic
Italic version of the fixed-width font (actually, something of a
misnomer, since most fixed-width fonts only have an oblique version,
not an italic version). Defaults to CI. Only matters for troff(1)
output.
fixedbolditalic
Bold italic (probably actually oblique) version of the fixed-width
font. Pod::Man doesn't assume you have this, and defaults to CB. Some
systems (such as Solaris) have this font available as CX. Only matters
for troff(1) output.
quotes
Sets the quote marks used to surround C<> text. If the value is a
single character, it is used as both the left and right quote; if it is
two characters, the first character is used as the left quote and the
second as the right quoted; and if it is four characters, the first two
are used as the left quote and the second two as the right quote.
This may also be set to the special value "none", in which case no
quote marks are added around C<> text (but the font is still changed
for troff output).
release
Set the centered footer. By default, this is the version of Perl you
run Pod::Man under. Note that some system an macro sets assume that
the centered footer will be a modification date and will prepend
something like "Last modified: "; if this is the case, you may want to
set "release" to the last modified date and "date" to the version
number.
section
Set the section for the ".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.
DIAGNOSTICS
roff font should be 1 or 2 chars, not "%s"
(F) You specified a *roff font (using "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).
Invalid link %s
(W) The POD source contained a "L<>" sequence that Pod::Man was unable
to parse. You should never see this error message; it probably
indicates a bug in Pod::Man.
Invalid quote specification "%s"
(F) The quote specification given (the quotes option to the
constructor) was invalid. A quote specification must be one, two, or
four characters long.
%s:%d: Unknown command paragraph "%s".
(W) The POD source contained a non-standard command paragraph
(something of the form "=command args") that Pod::Man didn't know
about. It was ignored.
Unknown escape E<%s>
(W) The POD source contained an "E<>" escape that Pod::Man didn't know
about. "E<%s>" was printed verbatim in the output.
Unknown sequence %s
(W) The POD source contained a non-standard interior sequence
(something of the form "X<>") that Pod::Man didn't know about. It was
ignored.
%s: Unknown command paragraph "%s" on line %d.
(W) The POD source contained a non-standard command paragraph
(something of the form "=command args") that Pod::Man didn't know
about. It was ignored.
Unmatched =back
(W) Pod::Man encountered a "=back" command that didn't correspond to an
"=over" command.
BUGS
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.
SEE ALSO
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.
AUTHOR
Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu>, based very heavily on the original pod2man
by Tom Christiansen <tchrist@mox.perl.com>.
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