Today I posted a message to the perl5-porters mailing list:

Subject: RFC: index core pods with X<>
From: itub@cpan.org

SYNOPSIS

Let's use the X<> POD formatting code for indexing the Perl core documentation. This will allow easier searching of the documentation, and can be incorporated into tools like perldoc or third-party websites.

Followed by a detailed explanation of the project. You can read the original message at http://www.xray.mpe.mpg.de/mailing-lists/perl5-porters/2005-07/msg01215.html.

The pumpking agreed that it is a good idea, but I need volunteers because otherwise I'll never finish. ;-) The only thing you need to do is go through the documentation and add index entries with X<> in relevant places. If you are interested, please contact me at itub@cpan.org.

When this is done, you'll be able to type

perldoc -k '<'
[download]

and get the relevant fragments of the documentation that deal with that operator! I already have a preliminary version of perldoc that does that, but the only file I've indexed so far is "perlop".