I just use a half-dozen line pod.cgi or pseudopod.cgi

Which means that everyone who wants to read the documentation has to be running a webserver.

And every time anyone wants to read a document, it has to be reparsed. Over and over all over the world.

And that pre-supposes that you know which document contains the information you need. If you come across an unfamiliar language construct in someone elses source code, there are about twenty different places you might find the relevant documentation. Once you found it, the documentation is generally quite good, and well maintained. But finding it? Oh boy!

As a for instance, if you do not already know which core document CHECK{} blocks are documented in, try finding it:

P:\test>perldoc CHECK No documentation found for "CHECK". P:\test>perldoc /f CHECK No documentation found for "/f". No documentation found for "CHECK". P:\test>perldoc -f CHECK No documentation for perl function `CHECK' found P:\test>perldoc -q CHECK Found in C:\Perl\lib\pod\perlfaq4.pod How do I verify a credit card checksum? Get the Business::CreditCard module from CPAN. Found in C:\Perl\lib\pod\perlfaq8.pod How do I check whether input is ready on the keyboard? The easiest way to do this is to read a key in nonblocking mode wi +th the Term::ReadKey module from CPAN, passing it an argument of -1 to in +dicate not to block: use Term::ReadKey; ReadMode('cbreak'); if (defined ($char = ReadKey(-1)) ) { # input was waiting and it was $char } else { # no input was waiting } ReadMode('normal'); # restore normal tty sett +ings Found in C:\Perl\lib\pod\perlfaq9.pod How do I check a valid mail address? You can't, at least, not in real time. Bummer, eh? Without sending mail to the address and seeing whether there's a h +uman [SNIP]

There are many more examples.

Even once converted to html per AS docs, there is still no easy way to find where in the IO::Socket::INET docs the recv call is documented. Or where in the LWP::* suite you should look to find the numeric/text mapping for HTTP error codes.


Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.
Lingua non convalesco, consenesco et abolesco. -- Rule 1 has a caveat! -- Who broke the cabal?
"Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".
In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.

In reply to Re^5: POD Standards by BrowserUk
in thread POD Standards by ptum

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":



  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.