> Is there anyone else hacking on a solution for this general problem in emacs, perhaps using org-mode as the tool?

Well the "easiest" solution I can see is to realize an extended POD-mode!

One usage might be visiting the same file in different buffers with according modes ...

Another switching modes by a keystroke (optionally folding away the "opposite" text-portions)

Anyway my knowledge of lisp is quite reduced and I don't dare manipulating cperl-mode. AFAIS here http://math.berkeley.edu/~ilya/software/emacs/cperl-mode.el.6.2.bz2 it does mark pod-sections with a "pod-here" flag, so this could be point to intercept.

The best lisp solution would be to ask Ilya to make cperl more modularizable, such that others could provide plugins...

The best overall solution might be to have a CPAN-Module which builds and tests the lisp-code. ... or extending perltidy such that the html-export is interpretable for emacs ... but thats a dream.

UPDATE:
* MidLifeXis Thanks for pointing me to org mode (tutorial), looks very interesting and reminds me a lot of ideas I had in my backmind for years. 8 )