POD2MAN
Section: Perl Programmers Reference Guide (1)
Updated: 2012-08-10
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NAME
pod2man - Convert POD data to formatted *roff input
SYNOPSIS
pod2man [
--center=
string] [
--date=
string]
[
--fixed=
font] [
--fixedbold=
font] [
--fixeditalic=
font]
[
--fixedbolditalic=
font] [
--name=
name] [
--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".
- --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.
- -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 puts any errors detected in the POD input in a POD
ERRORS section in the output manual page. If --stderr is given, errors
are sent to standard error instead and the POD ERRORS section is
suppressed.
- -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.
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.
BUGS
Lots of this documentation is duplicated from Pod::Man.
SEE ALSO
Pod::Man, Pod::Simple,
man(1),
nroff(1),
perlpod(1),
podchecker(1),
perlpodstyle(1),
troff(1),
man(7)
The man page documenting the an macro set may be man(5) instead of
man(7) on your system.
The current version of this script 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 Larry Wall and Tom Christiansen.
COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
Copyright 1999, 2000, 2001, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010 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.
Index
- NAME
-
- SYNOPSIS
-
- DESCRIPTION
-
- OPTIONS
-
- DIAGNOSTICS
-
- EXAMPLES
-
- BUGS
-
- SEE ALSO
-
- AUTHOR
-
- COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
-
© Andrew Scott 2006 -
2024,
All Rights Reserved