NAME

Pod::Text - convert POD data to formatted ASCII text

SYNOPSIS

        use Pod::Text;


        pod2text("perlfunc.pod");

Also: 

        pod2text [B<-a>] [B<->I<width>] < input.pod

DESCRIPTION

Pod::Text is a module that can convert documentation in the POD format (such as can be found throughout the Perl distribution) into formatted ASCII. Termcap is optionally supported for boldface/underline, and can enabled via $Pod::Text::termcap=1. If termcap has not been enabled, then backspaces will be used to simulate bold and underlined text.

A separate pod2text program is included that is primarily a wrapper for Pod::Text.

The single function pod2text() can take the optional options -a for an alternative output format, then a -width option with the max terminal width, followed by one or two arguments. The first should be the name of a file to read the pod from, or ``<&STDIN'' to read from STDIN. A second argument, if provided, should be a filehandle glob where output should be sent.

AUTHOR

Tom Christiansen <tchrist@mox.perl.com>

TODO

Cleanup work. The input and output locations need to be more flexible, termcap shouldn't be a global variable, and the terminal speed needs to be properly calculated.

DISCLAIMER

We are painfully aware that these documents may contain incorrect links and misformatted HTML. Such bugs lie in the automatic translation process that automatically created the hundreds and hundreds of separate documents that you find here. Please do not report link or formatting bugs, because we cannot fix per-document problems. The only bug reports that will help us are those that supply working patches to the installhtml or pod2html programs, or to the Pod::HTML module itself, for which I and the entire Perl community will shower you with thanks and praises.

If rather than formatting bugs, you encounter substantive content errors in these documents, such as mistakes in the explanations or code, please use the perlbug utility included with the Perl distribution.

--Tom Christiansen, Perl Documentation Compiler and Editor

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