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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 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

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     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.

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     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

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	 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

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     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>.

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

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