Pod::Markdown(3p)

NAME
Pod::Markdown - Convert POD to Markdown

VERSION
version 3.400

SYNOPSIS
  # Pod::Simple API is supported.

  # Command line usage: Parse a pod file and print to STDOUT:
  # $ perl -MPod::Markdown -e 'Pod::Markdown->new->filter(@ARGV)' path/to/POD/file > README.md

  # Work with strings:
  my $markdown;
  my $parser = Pod::Markdown->new;
  $parser->output_string(\$markdown);
  $parser->parse_string_document($pod_string);

  # See Pod::Simple docs for more.

DESCRIPTION
This module uses Pod::Simple to convert POD to Markdown.

Literal characters in Pod that are special in Markdown (like *asterisks*) are backslash-escaped when appropriate.

By default "markdown" and "html" formatted regions are accepted. Regions of "markdown" will be passed through unchanged. Regions of "html" will be placed inside a "<div>" tag so that markdown characters won't be processed. Regions of ":markdown" or ":html" will be processed as POD and included. To change which regions are accepted use the Pod::Simple API:

  my $parser = Pod::Markdown->new;
  $parser->unaccept_targets(qw( markdown html ));

  A note on encoding and escaping
The common Pod::Simple API returns a character string. If you want Pod::Markdown to return encoded octets, there are two attributes to assist: "match_encoding" and "output_encoding".

When an output encoding is requested any characters that are not valid for that encoding will be escaped as HTML entities.

This is not 100% safe, however.

Markdown escapes all ampersands inside of code spans, so escaping a character as an HTML entity inside of a code span will not be correct. However, with pod's "S" and "E" sequences it is possible to end up with high-bit characters inside of code spans.

So, while "output_encoding => 'ascii'" can work, it is not recommended. For these reasons (and more), "UTF-8" is the default, fallback encoding (when one is required).

If you prefer HTML entities over literal characters you can use "html_encode_chars" which will only operate outside of code spans (where it is safe).

METHODS

  new
  Pod::Markdown->new(%options);

The constructor accepts the following named arguments:

•   "local_module_url_prefix"

    Alters the perldoc urls that are created from "L<>" codes when the module is a "local" module ("Local::*" or "Foo_Corp::*" (see perlmodlib)).

    The default is to use "perldoc_url_prefix".

•   "local_module_re"

    Alternate regular expression for determining "local" modules. Default is "our $LOCAL_MODULE_RE = qr/^(Local::|\w*?_\w*)/".

•   "man_url_prefix"

    Alters the man page urls that are created from "L<>" codes.

    The default is "http://man.he.net/man".

•   "perldoc_url_prefix"

    Alters the perldoc urls that are created from "L<>" codes. Can be:

    •   "metacpan" (shortcut for "https://metacpan.org/pod/")

    •   "sco" (shortcut for "http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?")

    •   any url

    The default is "metacpan".

        Pod::Markdown->new(perldoc_url_prefix => 'http://localhost/perl/pod');

•   "perldoc_fragment_format"

    Alters the format of the url fragment for any "L<>" links that point to a section of an external document (""section" in name"). The default will be chosen according to the destination "perldoc_url_prefix". Alternatively you can specify one of the following:

    •   "metacpan"

    •   "sco"

    •   "pod_simple_xhtml"

    •   "pod_simple_html"

    •   A code ref

    The code ref can expect to receive two arguments: the parser object ($self) and the section text. For convenience the topic variable ($_) is also set to the section text:

      perldoc_fragment_format => sub { s/\W+/-/g; }

•   "markdown_fragment_format"

    Alters the format of the url fragment for any "L<>" links that point to an internal section of this document ("section").

    Unfortunately the format of the id attributes produced by whatever system translates the markdown into html is unknown at the time the markdown is generated so we do some simple clean up.

    Note: "markdown_fragment_format" and "perldoc_fragment_format" accept the same values: a (shortcut to a) method name or a code ref.

•   "include_meta_tags"

    Specifies whether or not to print author/title meta tags at the top of the document. Default is false.

•   "escape_url"

    Specifies whether or not to escape URLs. Default is true. It is not recommended to turn this off with an empty local_module_url_prefix, as the resulting local module URLs can be confused with IPv6 addresses by web browsers.

  html_encode_chars
A string of characters to encode as html entities (using "encode_entities" in HTML::Entities if available, falling back to numeric entities if not).

Possible values:

•   A value of 1 will use the default set of characters from HTML::Entities (control chars, high-bit chars, and "<&>"'").

•   A false value will disable.

•   Any other value is used as a string of characters (like a regular expression character class).

By default this is disabled and literal characters will be in the output stream. If you specify a desired "output_encoding" any characters not valid for that encoding will be HTML entity encoded.

Note that Markdown requires ampersands ("&") and left angle brackets ("<") to be entity-encoded if they could otherwise be interpreted as html entities. If this attribute is configured to encode those characters, they will always be encoded. If not, the module will make an effort to only encode the ones required, so there will be less html noise in the output.

  match_encoding
Boolean: If true, use the "=encoding" of the input pod as the encoding for the output.

If no encoding is specified, Pod::Simple will guess the encoding if it sees a high-bit character.

If no encoding is guessed (or the specified encoding is unusable), "output_encoding" will be used if it was specified. Otherwise "UTF-8" will be used.

This attribute is not recommended but is provided for consistency with other pod converters.

Defaults to false.

  output_encoding
The encoding to use when writing to the output file handle.

If neither this nor "match_encoding" are specified, a character string will be returned in whatever Pod::Simple output method you specified.

  local_module_re
Returns the regular expression used to determine local modules.

  local_module_url_prefix
Returns the url prefix in use for local modules.

  man_url_prefix
Returns the url prefix in use for man pages.

  perldoc_url_prefix
Returns the url prefix in use (after resolving shortcuts to urls).

  perldoc_fragment_format
Returns the coderef or format name used to format a url fragment to a section in an external document.

  markdown_fragment_format
Returns the coderef or format name used to format a url fragment to an internal section in this document.

  include_meta_tags
Returns the boolean value indicating whether or not meta tags will be printed.

  escape_url
Returns the boolean value indicating whether or not URLs should be escaped.

  format_man_url
Used internally to create a url (using "man_url_prefix") from a string like man(1).

  format_perldoc_url
    # With $name and section being the two parts of L<name/section>.
    my $url = $parser->format_perldoc_url($name, $section);

Used internally to create a url from the name (of a module or script) and a possible section (heading).

The format of the url fragment (when pointing to a section in a document) varies depending on the destination url so "perldoc_fragment_format" is used (which can be customized).

If the module name portion of the link is blank then the section is treated as an internal fragment link (to a section of the generated markdown document) and "markdown_fragment_format" is used (which can be customized).

  format_fragment_markdown
Format url fragment for an internal link by replacing non-word characters with dashes.

  format_fragment_pod_simple_xhtml
Format url fragment like "idify" in Pod::Simple::XHTML.

  format_fragment_pod_simple_html
Format url fragment like "section_name_tidy" in Pod::Simple::HTML.

  format_fragment_metacpan
Format fragment for metacpan.org (uses "format_fragment_pod_simple_xhtml").

  format_fragment_sco
Format fragment for search.cpan.org (uses "format_fragment_pod_simple_html").

  is_local_module
Uses "local_module_re" to determine if passed module is a "local" module.

SEE ALSO

•   pod2markdown - script included for command line usage

•   Pod::Simple - Super class that handles Pod parsing

•   perlpod - For writing POD

•   perlpodspec - For parsing POD

•   <http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax> - Markdown spec

SUPPORT

  Perldoc
You can find documentation for this module with the perldoc command.

  perldoc Pod::Markdown

  Websites
The following websites have more information about this module, and may be of help to you. As always, in addition to those websites please use your favorite search engine to discover more resources.

•   MetaCPAN

    A modern, open-source CPAN search engine, useful to view POD in HTML format.

    <https://metacpan.org/release/Pod-Markdown>

  Bugs / Feature Requests
Please report any bugs or feature requests by email to "bug-pod-markdown at rt.cpan.org", or through the web interface at <https://rt.cpan.org/Public/Bug/Report.html?Queue=Pod-Markdown>. You will be automatically notified of any progress on the request by the system.

  Source Code
<https://github.com/rwstauner/Pod-Markdown>

  git clone https://github.com/rwstauner/Pod-Markdown.git

AUTHORS

•   Marcel Gruenauer <marcel@cpan.org>

•   Victor Moral <victor@taquiones.net>

•   Ryan C. Thompson <rct at thompsonclan d0t org>

•   Aristotle Pagaltzis <pagaltzis@gmx.de>

•   Randy Stauner <rwstauner@cpan.org>

CONTRIBUTORS

•   Aristotle Pagaltzis <aristotle@cpan.org>

•   Cindy Wang (CindyLinz) <cindylinz@gmail.com>

•   Graham Ollis <plicease@cpan.org>

•   Johannes Schauer Marin Rodrigues <josch@mister-muffin.de>

•   Mike Covington <mfcovington@gmail.com>

•   motemen <motemen@cpan.org>

•   moznion <moznion@cpan.org>

•   Peter Vereshagin <veresc@cpan.org>

•   Ryan C. Thompson <rthompson@cpan.org>

•   Yasutaka ATARASHI <yakex@cpan.org>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
This software is copyright (c) 2011 by Randy Stauner.

This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.