Pod-XML - README

NAME

Pod::XML - Module to convert POD to XML

SYNOPSIS

      use Pod::XML;
      my $parser = Pod::XML->new();
      $parser->parse_from_file("foo.pod");

DESCRIPTION

This module uses Pod::Parser to parse POD and generates XML from the resulting parse stream. It uses its own format, described below.

XML FORMAT

The XML format is not a standardised format - if you wish to generate some standard XML format such as docbook, please use a tool such as XSLT to convert between this and that format.

The format uses the namespace
"http://axkit.org/ns/2000/pod2xml". Do not try and request this URI - it is virtual. You will get a 404.

The best way to describe the format is to show you:

      <pod xmlns="http://axkit.org/ns/2000/pod2xml">
        <head>
          <title>The first =head1 goes in here</title>
        </head>
        <sect1>
        <title>Subsequent =head1's create a sect1</title>
          <para>
          Ordinary paragraphs of text create a para tag.
          </para>
          <verbatim>
          Indented verbatim sections go in verbatim tags.
          </verbatim>
          <sect2>
          <title>=head2's go in sect2</title>
            <para>
            Up to =head4 is supported (despite not really being 
            supported by pod), producing sect3 and 
            sect4 respectively for =head3 and =head4.
            </para>
            <para>
            Bold text goes in a <strong>strong</strong> tag.
            </para>
            <para>
            Italic text goes in a <emphasis>emphasis</emphasis> tag.
            </para>
            <para>
            Code goes in a <code>code</code> tag.
            </para>
            <para>
            Lists (=over, =item, =back) go in list/item/itemtext 
            tags. The itemtext element is only present if the 
            =item text is <strong>not</strong> the "*" character.
            </para>
          </sect2>
        </sect1>
      </pod>

If the first =head1 is "NAME" (like standard perl modules are supposed to be) it takes the next paragraph as the document title. Other standard head elements of POD are left unchanged (particularly, the SYNOPSIS and DESCRIPTION elements of standard POD).

Pod::XML tries to be careful about nesting sect's based on the head level in the original POD. Let me know if this doesn't work for you.

AUTHOR

Matt Sergeant, matt@sergeant.org

SEE ALSO

Pod::Parser

BUGS

There is no xml2pod.

LICENSE

This is free software, you may use it and distribute it under the same terms as Perl itself.