Re: how POD will look on CPAN

I beg to differ about "not caring". Using the exact style sheet as CPAN probably isn't important, but making sure you have an idea of how the pod is being parsed is important.

It isn't so easy to read the text version of the pod file and be certain that you have all of your pod tags in the right place and properly formatted. Looking at an HTML rendering provides important and easy to assess visual feedback on your pod tagging. I make mistakes all the time, especially when I'm nesting tags, using unfamiliar pod syntax, or linking to external material. The documentation of pod syntax also isn't always 100% and it is necessary to experiment a bit before one has the right syntax. Broken links are another matter that is hard to assess merely by reading the pod file.

You can get a rough idea of how the HTML will look by using the pod2html program. At the minimum it will help you identify syntax errors, misplaced tags, and broken links.

Best, beth

Comment on Re: how POD will look on CPAN

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Re^2: how POD will look on CPAN by lima1 (Curate) on Oct 01, 2009 at 12:41 UTC
True. But it also helps to use Test::Pod and Perl::Critic with Pod::Spell.	[reply]
Re^2: how POD will look on CPAN by Bloodnok (Vicar) on Oct 01, 2009 at 12:24 UTC
I tend to only use pod2html if I'm interested in how the end result will/might look - to use it to parse and validate the POD is, IMO, overkill since you need to run the program and then (re-)load the generated page in your browser. Whereas, whilst developing/writing the pod, I simply run perldoc over the module/script/pod file under development - much easier and quicker. A user level that continues to overstate my experience :-))	[reply]