


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_file (\*STDIN);

           # 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::Simple, Pod::Man supports the
       same methods and interfaces.  See Pod::Simple for all the
       details.

       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(3), 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



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       "paired quotes," makes C++ look right, puts a little space
       between double underscores, makes ALLCAPS a teeny bit
       smaller in troff, 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 verbatim text and
           code.  Defaults to "CW".  Some systems may want "CR"
           instead.  Only matters for troff output.

       fixedbold
           Bold version of the fixed-width font.  Defaults to
           "CB".  Only matters for troff 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 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 output.

       name
           Set the name of the manual page.  Without this option,
           the manual name is set to the uppercased base name of
           the file being converted unless the manual section is
           3, in which case the path is parsed to see if it is a
           Perl module path.  If it is, a path like
           ".../lib/Pod/Man.pm" is converted into a name like
           "Pod::Man".  This option, if given, overrides any
           automatic determination of the name.

       quotes
           Sets the quote marks used to surround C<> text.  If
           the value is a single character, it is used as both



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           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.

       stderr
           Send error messages about invalid POD to standard
           error instead of appending a POD ERRORS section to the
           generated *roff output.

       utf8
           By default, Pod::Man produces the most conservative
           possible *roff output to try to ensure that it will
           work with as many different *roff implementations as
           possible.  Many *roff implementations cannot handle
           non-ASCII characters, so this means all non-ASCII
           characters are converted either to a *roff escape
           sequence that tries to create a properly accented
           character (at least for troff output) or to "X".

           If this option is set, Pod::Man will instead output
           UTF-8.  If your *roff implementation can handle it,
           this is the best output format to use and avoids



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           corruption of documents containing non-ASCII
           characters.  However, be warned that *roff source with
           literal UTF-8 characters is not supported by many
           implementations and may even result in segfaults and
           other bad behavior.

           Be aware that, when using this option, the input
           encoding of your POD source must be properly declared
           unless it is US-ASCII or Latin-1.  POD input without
           an "=encoding" command will be assumed to be in
           Latin-1, and if it's actually in UTF-8, the output
           will be double-encoded.  See perlpod(1) for more
           information on the "=encoding" command.

       The standard Pod::Simple method parse_file() takes one
       argument naming the POD file to read from.  By default,
       the output is sent to "STDOUT", but this can be changed
       with the output_fd() method.

       The standard Pod::Simple method parse_from_file() takes up
       to two arguments, the first being the input file to read
       POD from and the second being the file to write the
       formatted output to.

       You can also call parse_lines() to parse an array of lines
       or parse_string_document() to parse a document already in
       memory.  To put the output into a string instead of a file
       handle, call the output_string() method.  See Pod::Simple
       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 and
           troff don't either).

       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.

BUGS
       Encoding handling assumes that PerlIO is available and
       does not work properly if it isn't.  The "utf8" option is
       therefore not supported unless Perl is built with PerlIO
       support.

       There is currently no way to turn off the guesswork that
       tries to format unmarked text appropriately, and sometimes
       it isn't wanted (particularly when using POD to document



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       something other than Perl).  Most of the work toward
       fixing this has now been done, however, and all that's
       still needed is a user interface.

       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.  Currently, no index entries are emitted
       for anything in NAME.

       Pod::Man doesn't handle font names longer than two
       characters.  Neither do most troff 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 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.

       Pod::Man is excessively slow.

CAVEATS
       If Pod::Man is given the "utf8" option, the encoding of
       its output file handle will be forced to UTF-8 if
       possible, overriding any existing encoding.  This will be
       done even if the file handle is not created by Pod::Man
       and was passed in from outside.  This maintains
       consistency regardless of PERL_UNICODE and other settings.

       The handling of hyphens and em dashes is somewhat fragile,
       and one may get the wrong one under some circumstances.
       This should only matter for troff output.

       When and whether to use small caps is somewhat tricky, and
       Pod::Man doesn't necessarily get it right.

       Converting neutral double quotes to properly matched
       double quotes doesn't work unless there are no formatting
       codes between the quote marks.  This only matters for
       troff output.

AUTHOR
       Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu>, based very heavily on the
       original pod2man by Tom Christiansen
       <tchrist@mox.perl.com>.  The modifications to work with
       Pod::Simple instead of Pod::Parser were originally
       contributed by Sean Burke (but I've since hacked them
       beyond recognition and all bugs are mine).

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
       Copyright 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006,



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       2007, 2008, 2009 Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu>.

       This program is free software; you may redistribute it
       and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

SEE ALSO
       Pod::Simple, 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 and troff.  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.

       The current version of this module is always available
       from its web site at
       <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/software/podlators/>.  It is
       also part of the Perl core distribution as of 5.6.0.































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