NAME

Pod::Readme - Convert POD to README file

REQUIREMENTS

This module should run on Perl 5.005 or newer. The following non-core modules (depending on your Perl version) are required:

      Pod::PlainText
      Test::More

INSTALLATION

Installation can be done using the traditional Makefile.PL or the newer Build.PL methods.

Using Makefile.PL:

      perl Makefile.PL
      make test
      make install

(On Windows platforms you should use `nmake' instead.)

Using Build.PL (if you have Module::Build installed):

      perl Build.PL
      perl Build test
      perl Build install

SYNOPSIS

      use Pod::Readme;
      my $parser = Pod::Readme->new();

      # Read POD from STDIN and write to STDOUT
      $parser->parse_from_filehandle;

      # Read POD from Module.pm and write to README
      $parser->parse_from_file('Module.pm', 'README');

DESCRIPTION

This module is a subclass of Pod::PlainText which provides additional POD markup for generating README files.

Why should one bother with this? One can simply use

pod2text Module.pm > README

A problem with doing that is that the default pod2text converter will add text to links, so that "L<Module>" is translated to "the Module manpage".

Another problem is that the README includes the entirety of the module documentation! Most people browsing the README file do not need all of this information.

Likewise, including installation and requirement information in the module documentation is not necessary either, since the module is already installed.

This module allows authors to mark portions of the POD to be included only in, or to be excluded from the README file. It also allows you to include portions of another file (such as a separate ChangeLog).

See the module documentation for more details.