in reply to The sad state of Perl documentation

it's pretty easy to make PDF's from POD using fairly common tools. watch: 
$ perldoc -u HTTP::Request > HTTP_Request.pod
$ pod2latex HTTP_Request.pod
$ perl -e 'open TEX, "+< HTTP_Request.tex" or die;
    @l = <TEX>;
    seek TEX, 0, 0; truncate TEX, 0;
    print TEX "\\documentclass[10pt]{article}\\begin{document}", $/,
    print TEX map { s/^%\\/\\/; $_ } @l;
    print TEX "\\end{document}", $/;
    close TEX;'
$ pdflatex HTTP_Request.tex

[download]

here are HTTP::Request and strict. PostScript is similarly easy to generate by replacing pdflatex with pslatex.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
RE: RE: The sad state of Perl documentation
by merlyn (Sage) on Sep 14, 2000 at 03:11 UTC
[reply]
RE: RE: The sad state of Perl documentation
by SuperCruncher (Pilgrim) on Sep 14, 2000 at 21:14 UTC
    I think you're largely missing the point. Sure, I can convert the document in whatever format using module Foo::Bar, but I shouldn't have to. What if I want to get a nice clean print-out of part of the perl documentation? The quickest way to do this is to download a PDF, and print the desired pages.

    The solution should not be that I am forced to write a script to do the converting for me. Also imagine poor Perl newbies trying to figure out how to install module Foo::Bar required for converting into whatever format and then trying to figure out how to actually write the script.

[reply]

      if you're really so worried about the "poor newbies", then undertake this task yourself. don't wait for "the leaders" of the "Perl community" to do it for you. you don't even have to write a script. you can just use the one i wrote, or take merlyn's suggestion and use pod2pdf or its underlying module Pod::Pdf.

      then, find space on a web server somewhere and keep available an up-to-date version of your compiled documentation. i haven't missed any points. you have in assuming that someone else should be creating this documentation that you want. more power to whomever should decide that printable documentation is important enough to themselves and other users of Perl to implement and maintain a resource such as this.

[reply]

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