


Pod::Man(3p)     Perl Programmers Reference Guide    Pod::Man(3p)


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 Documen-
       tation", 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



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       "$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 modifica-
           tion date of the input file will be used, or the cur-
           rent date if stat() can't find that file (the case if
           the input is from STDIN), and the date will be format-
           ted 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 sec-
           ond as the right quoted; and if it is four characters,
           the first two are used as the left quote and the sec-
           ond two as the right quote.

           This may also be set to the special value "none", in



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           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 ver-
           sion 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 com-
           mands, 2 for system calls, 3 for functions, 4 for
           devices, 5 for file formats, 6 for games, 7 for mis-
           cellaneous information, and 8 for administrator com-
           mands.  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 con-
           sistent 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", "fixed-
           bold", 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.





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       Invalid quote specification ""%s""
           (F) The quote specification given (the quotes option
           to the constructor) was invalid.  A quote specifica-
           tion 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 ver-
           batim 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 some-
       what fragile, and one may get the wrong one under some
       circumstances.  This should only matter for troff(1) out-
       put.

       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 charac-
       ters.  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,



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       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 writ-
       ing, 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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