(wtf?). Thanks in advance for help.

I can confirm this, there is like ~3 bugs here.

Adding 

=encoding utf8

[download]
makes ::HTML die with 
Cannot decode string with wide characters at C:/perl/5.12.2/lib/MSWin3
+2-x86-multi-thread/Encode.pm line 176.

[download]

Pod::Simple::XHTML generates 

<p><a href="http://search.cpan.org/perldoc?&amp;#x104;">&#x104;</a></p
+>

[download]
Both ::HTML and ::XHTML generate 
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1
+" />

[download]
regardless of BOM or 
=encoding utf8

[download]
which doesn't kill ::XHTML

This is probably related Bug #24820 for Pod-Simple: Pod encoding, unicode issues

You should report bug upstream :)

In reply to Re: Problem with url escaping in Pod::Simple::HTML and UTF-8 by Anonymous Monk
in thread Problem with url escaping in Pod::Simple::HTML and UTF-8 by xenu

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.