Pod::Simple::XHTML(3)

NAME
Pod::Simple::XHTML -- format Pod as validating XHTML

SYNOPSIS
  use Pod::Simple::XHTML;

  my $parser = Pod::Simple::XHTML->new();

  ...

  $parser->parse_file('path/to/file.pod');

DESCRIPTION
This class is a formatter that takes Pod and renders it as XHTML validating HTML.

This is a subclass of Pod::Simple::Methody and inherits all its methods. The implementation is entirely different than Pod::Simple::HTML, but it largely preserves the same interface.

METHODS
Pod::Simple::XHTML offers a number of methods that modify the format of the HTML output. Call these after creating the parser object, but before the call to "parse_file":

  my $parser = Pod::PseudoPod::HTML->new();
  $parser->set_optional_param("value");
  $parser->parse_file($file);

  perldoc_url_prefix
In turning Foo::Bar into http://whatever/Foo%3a%3aBar, what to put before the "Foo%3a%3aBar". The default value is "http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?".

  perldoc_url_postfix
What to put after "Foo%3a%3aBar" in the URL. This option is not set by default.

  title_prefix, title_postfix
What to put before and after the title in the head. The values should already be &-escaped.

  html_css
  $parser->html_css('path/to/style.css');

The URL or relative path of a CSS file to include. This option is not set by default.

  html_javascript
The URL or relative path of a JavaScript file to pull in. This option is not set by default.

  html_doctype
A document type tag for the file. This option is not set by default.

  html_header_tags
Additional arbitrary HTML tags for the header of the document. The default value is just a content type header tag:

  <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">

Add additional meta tags here, or blocks of inline CSS or JavaScript (wrapped in the appropriate tags).

  default_title
Set a default title for the page if no title can be determined from the content. The value of this string should already be &-escaped.

  force_title
Force a title for the page (don't try to determine it from the content). The value of this string should already be &-escaped.

  html_header, html_footer
Set the HTML output at the beginning and end of each file. The default header includes a title, a doctype tag (if "html_doctype" is set), a content tag (customized by "html_header_tags"), a tag for a CSS file (if "html_css" is set), and a tag for a Javascript file (if "html_javascript" is set). The default footer simply closes the "html" and "body" tags.

The options listed above customize parts of the default header, but setting "html_header" or "html_footer" completely overrides the built-in header or footer. These may be useful if you want to use template tags instead of literal HTML headers and footers or are integrating converted POD pages in a larger website.

If you want no headers or footers output in the HTML, set these options to the empty string.

  index
TODO -- Not implemented.

Whether to add a table-of-contents at the top of each page (called an index for the sake of tradition).

SUBCLASSING
If the standard options aren't enough, you may want to subclass Pod::Simple::XHMTL. These are the most likely candidates for methods you'll want to override when subclassing.

  handle_text
This method handles the body of text within any element: it's the body of a paragraph, or everything between a "=begin" tag and the corresponding "=end" tag, or the text within an L entity, etc. You would want to override this if you are adding a custom element type that does more than just display formatted text. Perhaps adding a way to generate HTML tables from an extended version of POD.

So, let's say you want add a custom element called 'foo'. In your subclass's "new" method, after calling "SUPER::new" you'd call:

  $new->accept_targets_as_text( 'foo' );

Then override the "start_for" method in the subclass to check for when "$flags->{'target'}" is equal to 'foo' and set a flag that marks that you're in a foo block (maybe "$self->{'in_foo'} = 1"). Then override the "handle_text" method to check for the flag, and pass $text to your custom subroutine to construct the HTML output for 'foo' elements, something like:

  sub handle_text {
      my ($self, $text) = @_;
      if ($self->{'in_foo'}) {
          $self->{'scratch'} .= build_foo_html($text);
      } else {
          $self->{'scratch'} .= $text;
      }
  }

SEE ALSO
Pod::Simple, Pod::Simple::Methody

COPYRIGHT
Copyright (c) 2003-2005 Allison Randal.

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. The full text of the license can be found in the LICENSE file included with this module.

This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but without any warranty; without even the implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

AUTHOR
Allison Randal <allison@perl.org>