pod2man - Online in the Cloud

PROGRAM:

NAME

pod2man - Convert POD data to formatted *roff input

SYNOPSIS

pod2man [--center=string] [--date=string] [--errors=style]
[--fixed=font] [--fixedbold=font] [--fixeditalic=font]
[--fixedbolditalic=font] [--name=name] [--nourls]
[--official] [--quotes=quotes] [--release[=version]]
[--section=manext] [--stderr] [--utf8] [--verbose]
[input [output] ...]

pod2man --help

DESCRIPTION

pod2man is a front-end for Pod::Man, using it to generate *roff input from POD source.
The resulting *roff code is suitable for display on a terminal using nroff(1), normally
via man(1), or printing using troff(1).

input is the file to read for POD source (the POD can be embedded in code). If input
isn't given, it defaults to "STDIN". output, if given, is the file to which to write the
formatted output. If output isn't given, the formatted output is written to "STDOUT".
Several POD files can be processed in the same pod2man invocation (saving module load and
compile times) by providing multiple pairs of input and output files on the command line.

--section, --release, --center, --date, and --official can be used to set the headers and
footers to use; if not given, Pod::Man will assume various defaults. See below or
Pod::Man for details.

pod2man assumes that your *roff formatters have a fixed-width font named "CW". If yours
is called something else (like "CR"), use --fixed 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, and therefore pod2man 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 $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," and
takes care of several other troff-specific tweaks. See Pod::Man for complete information.

OPTIONS

-c string, --center=string
Sets the centered page header to string. The default is "User Contributed Perl
Documentation", but also see --official below.

-d string, --date=string
Set the left-hand footer string to this value. By default, the modification date of
the input file will be used, or the current date if input comes from "STDIN", and will
be based on UTC (so that the output will be reproducible regardless of local time
zone).

-errors=style
Set the error handling style. "die" says to throw an exception on any POD formatting
error. "stderr" says to report errors on standard error, but not to throw an
exception. "pod" says to include a POD ERRORS section in the resulting documentation
summarizing the errors. "none" ignores POD errors entirely, as much as possible.

The default is "die".

--fixed=font
The fixed-width font to use for verbatim text and code. Defaults to "CW". Some
systems may want "CR" instead. Only matters for troff(1) output.

--fixedbold=font
Bold version of the fixed-width font. Defaults to "CB". Only matters for troff(1)
output.

--fixeditalic=font
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=font
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.

-h, --help
Print out usage information.

-l, --lax
No longer used. pod2man used to check its input for validity as a manual page, but
this should now be done by podchecker(1) instead. Accepted for backward
compatibility; this option no longer does anything.

-n name, --name=name
Set the name of the manual page to name. 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.

Note that this option is probably not useful when converting multiple POD files at
once. The convention for Unix man pages for commands is for the man page title to be
in all-uppercase even if the command isn't.

When converting POD source from standard input, this option is required, since there's
otherwise no way to know what to use as the name of the manual page.

--nourls
Normally, L<> formatting codes with a URL but anchor text are formatted to show both
the anchor text and the URL. In other words:

L<foo|http://example.com/>

is formatted as:

foo <http://example.com/>

This flag, if given, suppresses the URL when anchor text is given, so this example
would be formatted as just "foo". This can produce less cluttered output in cases
where the URLs are not particularly important.

-o, --official
Set the default header to indicate that this page is part of the standard Perl
release, if --center is not also given.

-q quotes, --quotes=quotes
Sets the quote marks used to surround C<> text to quotes. If quotes is a single
character, it is used as both the left and right quote; if quotes is two characters,
the first character is used as the left quote and the second as the right quoted; and
if quotes is four characters, the first two are used as the left quote and the second
two as the right quote.

quotes 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).

-r, --release
Set the centered footer. By default, this is the version of Perl you run pod2man
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.

-s, --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
By default, pod2man dies if any errors are detected in the POD input. If --stderr is
given and no --errors flag is present, errors are sent to standard error, but pod2man
does not abort. This is equivalent to "--errors=stderr" and is supported for backward
compatibility.

-u, --utf8
By default, pod2man 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".

This option says to instead output literal UTF-8 characters. If your *roff
implementation can handle it, this is the best output format to use and avoids
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.

-v, --verbose
Print out the name of each output file as it is being generated.

EXIT STATUS

As long as all documents processed result in some output, even if that output includes
errata (a "POD ERRORS" section generated with "--errors=pod"), pod2man will exit with
status 0. If any of the documents being processed do not result in an output document,
pod2man will exit with status 1. If there are syntax errors in a POD document being
processed and the error handling style is set to the default of "die", pod2man will abort
immediately with exit status 255.

DIAGNOSTICS

If pod2man fails with errors, see Pod::Man and Pod::Simple for information about what
those errors might mean.

EXAMPLES

pod2man program > program.1
pod2man SomeModule.pm /usr/perl/man/man3/SomeModule.3
pod2man --section=7 note.pod > note.7

If you would like to print out a lot of man page continuously, you probably want to set
the C and D registers to set contiguous page numbering and even/odd paging, at least on
some versions of man(7).

troff -man -rC1 -rD1 perl.1 perldata.1 perlsyn.1 ...

To get index entries on "STDERR", turn on the F register, as in:

troff -man -rF1 perl.1

The indexing merely outputs messages via ".tm" for each major page, section, subsection,
item, and any "X<>" directives. See Pod::Man for more details.

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