podlators version 0.02
             (Format POD source into various output formats)

  Copyright 1999 Russ Allbery <rra@stanford.edu>.  All rights reserved.
  This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
  under the same terms as Perl itself.


INTRODUCTION

  This package currently contains only a proposed replacement for pod2text
  and Pod::Text in the current Perl distribution (Pod::PlainText is the
  current name of the module).  The modules contained in it use
  Pod::Parser rather than doing the POD parsing themselves, and are
  designed to be object-oriented and very easy to subclass.  As an
  example, two useful subclasses of Pod::PlainText are also included:
  Pod::Text::Color, which uses ANSI color escape sequences to highlight
  text, and Pod::Text::Termcap, which determines the correct control
  sequences to embolden and underline text from terminal termcap
  information.

  The output of Pod::PlainText should be identical to the output of the
  original Pod::Text module, except for fixed bugs.  This has been tested
  by comparing the output of both modules when run on perlfunc.pod from
  the Perl 5.005_02 distribution, by comparing output for several other
  shorter pages, and by using the Pod::Parser test suite.

  Known bugs fixed relative to Pod::Text:  The first line of text after an
  =item command is wrapped correctly, various problems with L<> text have
  been fixed, and if you use Pod::Text::Termcap, the termcap sequences
  work correctly and use POSIX termios to determine the terminal speed.

  There are also a number of additional features, mostly finer control of
  the output of the module under a variety of circumstances.  The
  programmatic interface is also cleaner.

  This package has a general name because it will likely eventually
  include other translators for other output formats.  LaTeX and *roff are
  the most likely to show up first.


INSTALLATION

  Follow the standard installation procedure for Perl modules, which is to
  type the following commands:

          perl Makefile.PL
          make
          make test
          make install

  You'll probably need to do the last as root.  This will also install a
  driver script named pod2txt; see it's man page for more information.

  Note that in order to use Pod::Text::Color, you have to have the module
  Term::ANSIColor (available from CPAN) installed.


THANKS

  To Tom Christiansen, for writing the original Pod::Text.  This module is
  based very heavily on that, particularly the termcap handling, and its
  output is designed to mimic the output of that module.

  To Brad Appleton, for writing Pod::Parser, which made writing this
  entire package the work of a single Saturday, and for finding lots of
  bugs in the first try.

  To Gurusamy Sarathy, for pointing out the need for a pod2text()
  compatibility interface for older applications, and for being willing to
  roll this code into the next Perl distribution.

                                                Russ Allbery
                                                rra@stanford.edu