According to the alternative code Lee is showing I'd expect that it's parsing and tidying HTML.

According to the O'Reilly snippet it just adds newlines and indentation to CGI's HTML-Functions.

Metacpan allows you to select old versions and view the POD, like search.cpan used to. What you mention is one of the issues I raised, a lot of old info that's highly ranked on search engines (some of it at legally questionable), vastly out of date, and still championed by a vocal minority.

While I am one of the “don’t learn CGI.pm today” crowd I am also quite sad about the loss of CGI::Pretty and related methods in CGI and I think it’s a mistake to deprecate and phase them out. There is no real gain but confusion. CGI::Simple or even CGI::Tiny should have been the target.

I was explaining why I was confused (remember you asked!) and the docs are misleading.

I already found the original version, but how can I or another reader know that I need to look up the original version if the new POD is pointing into the wrong direction.

I agree about the OP, but the doc could be clearer when breaking old websites like PM.

update

And I can understand that Lee didn't want to maintain the AUTOLOAD code in CGI::Pretty

Cheers Rolf
_{(addicted to the Perl Programming Language :)
Wikisyntax for the Monastery FootballPerl is like chess, only without the dice}