You'll find it's really easy to learn and well worth it. I, too, learned pod after using perl for a while.

The only mental shift you'll need, I think, is to remember that newlines and whitespace are significant in pod sections. Other than that, just open perlpod in a spare terminal for reference, and start writing it. For examples, perldoc -m will open any module or utility you like with the pod unparsed. You can also use perldoc to see how you're doing as you write.

The utilities pod2man, pod2html, pod2latex and friends will convert pod to other formats. That is so handy, and pod so simple, that when I have to produce any covered format I first write in pod.

After Compline,
Zaxo

In reply to Re^3: a simple exercise in readability by Zaxo
in thread a simple exercise in readability by apotheon

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.