NAME LaTeX::Pod - Transform LaTeX source files to POD (Plain old documentation) SYNOPSIS use LaTeX::Pod; $parser = LaTeX::Pod->new('/path/to/source'); print $parser->convert; DESCRIPTION `LaTeX::Pod' converts LaTeX sources to Perl's POD (Plain old documentation) format. Currently only a subset of the available LaTeX language is supported; see below for further information. CONSTRUCTOR new The constructor requires that the path to the LaTeX source must be defined: $parser = LaTeX::Pod->new('/path/to/source'); Returns the parser object. METHODS convert There is only one public method available, namely `convert()': $parser->convert; Returns the computed POD document as string. SUPPORTED LANGUAGE SUBSET Currently supported: * chapters * sections/subsections/subsub... * verbatim blocks * itemized lists * plain text * bold/italic/code font tags * umlauts IMPLEMENTATION DETAILS The current implementation is a bit *flaky* because `LaTeX::TOM', the framework being used for parsing the LaTeX nodes, makes a clear distinction between various types of nodes. As example, an \item directive has quite often a separate text associated with it as its content. Such directives and their expected converted relatives within the output stream possibly cannot be easily detected without some kind of sophisticated "look-behind" mechanism, which is how `LaTeX::Pod' internally functions. `LaTeX::Pod' was designed with the intention to be *context-sensitive* aware. This is being achieved by setting which node has been seen before the current one in order to be able to call the appropriate routine for a LaTeX directive with two or more nodes. Furthermore, `LaTeX::Pod' registers which node it has previously encountered and unregisters this information when it made use of it. Considering that the POD documentation format has a limited subset of directives, the overhead of keeping track of node occurences appears to be bearable. The POD computed may consist of too many newlines before undergoing a transformation where leading and trailing newlines will be truncated. SEE ALSO LaTeX::TOM AUTHOR Steven Schubiger LICENSE This program is free software; you may redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. See http://www.perl.com/perl/misc/Artistic.html