Pod::Man(3p) Perl Programmers Reference Guide Pod::Man(3p)NAMEPod::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');
DESCRIPTIONPod::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 con-
ventionally 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 Pod::Parser 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 cen-
tered 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 gen-
erally only matters for troff output for printing. Simi-
larly, 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
perl v5.8.8 2005-02-05 1
Pod::Man(3p) Perl Programmers Reference Guide Pod::Man(3p)
dashes that aren't used as hyphens into en dashes, makes
long dashes--like this--into proper em dashes, fixes "paired
quotes," makes C++ look right, puts a little space between
double underbars, 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 vertabim 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, some-
thing 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 out-
put.
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.
perl v5.8.8 2005-02-05 2
Pod::Man(3p) Perl Programmers Reference Guide Pod::Man(3p)
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 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 sec-
tion 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 sec-
tion 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
Pod::Parser 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
perl v5.8.8 2005-02-05 3
Pod::Man(3p) Perl Programmers Reference Guide Pod::Man(3p)
characters, although some *roff extensions do (the
canonical versions of nroff and troff don't either).
Invalid link %s
(W) The POD source contained a "L<>" formatting code
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.
%s:%d: Unknown escape E<%s>
(W) The POD source contained an "E<>" escape that
Pod::Man didn't know about. "E<%s>" was printed verba-
tim in the output.
%s:%d: Unknown formatting code %s
(W) The POD source contained a non-standard formatting
code (something of the form "X<>") that Pod::Man didn't
know about. It was ignored.
%s:%d: Unmatched =back
(W) Pod::Man encountered a "=back" command that didn't
correspond to an "=over" command.
BUGS
Eight-bit input data isn't handled at all well at present.
The correct approach would be to map E<> escapes to the
appropriate UTF-8 characters and then do a translation pass
on the output according to the user-specified output charac-
ter set. Unfortunately, we can't send eight-bit data
directly to the output unless the user says this is okay,
since some vendor *roff implementations can't handle eight-
bit data. If the *roff implementation can, however, that's
far superior to the current hacked characters that only work
under troff.
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
something other than Perl).
The NAME section should be recognized specially and index
entries emitted for everything in that section. This would
perl v5.8.8 2005-02-05 4
Pod::Man(3p) Perl Programmers Reference Guide Pod::Man(3p)
have to be deferred until the next section, since extraneous
things in NAME tends to confuse various man page processors.
Pod::Man doesn't handle font names longer than two charac-
ters. 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 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.
Pod::Man is excessively slow.
CAVEATS
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.
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 stan-
dard 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.
AUTHOR
Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu>, based very heavily on the
original pod2man by Tom Christiansen <tchrist@mox.perl.com>.
COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
Copyright 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 by Russ Allbery
<rra@stanford.edu>.
perl v5.8.8 2005-02-05 5
Pod::Man(3p) Perl Programmers Reference Guide Pod::Man(3p)
This program is free software; you may redistribute it
and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.
perl v5.8.8 2005-02-05 6