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Re: Which Pod module should be used / subclassed?
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Karl Williamson
May 10, 2019, 12:00:21 AM5/10/19
to Harald Jörg, pod-p...@perl.org
On 5/5/19 4:52 PM, Harald Jörg wrote:
> Hello Pod-People,
>
> I hope that I don't start a religious war with this question.
> I found this mailing list advertised in the Pod::Simple docs, so I would
> accept a bias towards Pod::Simple based solutions :)
>
> So here's what I want to do: Extract Pod from a bunch of (ca 100) Perl
> modules and Pod files and convert it to HTML. Or XHTML. Anything good
> for today's browsers is fine. Sounds pretty TIMTOWTDI, but every way
> I've tried so far has minor issues, and I've some requirements for which
> I haven't found an existing solution yet.
>
> The issues are rather harmless:
>
> - Pod::POM is what's used today in the software to create the HTML
> docs. It fails to process L<The Perl Homepage|https://www.perl.org>
> links correctly.
>
> - Pod::Simple::HTML produces invalid HTML (nested 'a' elements) when a
> heading or item contains a Link like this:
>
> =head1 Start at L<https://www.perl.org>
>
> - Pod::Simple::XHTML apparently makes no effort to find content for the
> <title> element (nor does core pod2html, BTW).
>
> And there are a few things I miss. They could be implemented in a
> subclass of either of these, or even provided as an enhancement via Pull
> Request:
>
> - A custom link resolver: I want links to documents within the project
> to be relative, but link to other CPAN modules to be
> absolute. Preferably to metacpan.org instead of search.cpan.org.
>
> - A custom table of contents
>
> - Custom (or just different) backlinks to top of page
>
> - Decent heuristics for page titles (Pod::Simple::PullParser does that
> marvelously)
>
> - ...and some more, but not enough to roll out my own converter.
>
> So, which if the modules is considered "state of the art" by the Pod
> People? Which one of them is least likely to be deprecated?
>
> Do others have similar requirements?
>
I seem to be the one mostly maintaining Pod:Simple these days. I think
the design of Pod::Simple is basically sound. If you came up with
reasonable pull requests for either of those modules, I would apply them.
All those TODOs in the code are from the original author, I believe, and
they would be nice to have, but the code basically works and no one has
felt the need to spend the effort to implement them.
> Hello Pod-People,
>
> I hope that I don't start a religious war with this question.
> I found this mailing list advertised in the Pod::Simple docs, so I would
> accept a bias towards Pod::Simple based solutions :)
>
> So here's what I want to do: Extract Pod from a bunch of (ca 100) Perl
> modules and Pod files and convert it to HTML. Or XHTML. Anything good
> for today's browsers is fine. Sounds pretty TIMTOWTDI, but every way
> I've tried so far has minor issues, and I've some requirements for which
> I haven't found an existing solution yet.
>
> The issues are rather harmless:
>
> - Pod::POM is what's used today in the software to create the HTML
> docs. It fails to process L<The Perl Homepage|https://www.perl.org>
> links correctly.
>
> - Pod::Simple::HTML produces invalid HTML (nested 'a' elements) when a
> heading or item contains a Link like this:
>
> =head1 Start at L<https://www.perl.org>
>
> - Pod::Simple::XHTML apparently makes no effort to find content for the
> <title> element (nor does core pod2html, BTW).
>
> And there are a few things I miss. They could be implemented in a
> subclass of either of these, or even provided as an enhancement via Pull
> Request:
>
> - A custom link resolver: I want links to documents within the project
> to be relative, but link to other CPAN modules to be
> absolute. Preferably to metacpan.org instead of search.cpan.org.
>
> - A custom table of contents
>
> - Custom (or just different) backlinks to top of page
>
> - Decent heuristics for page titles (Pod::Simple::PullParser does that
> marvelously)
>
> - ...and some more, but not enough to roll out my own converter.
>
> So, which if the modules is considered "state of the art" by the Pod
> People? Which one of them is least likely to be deprecated?
>
> Do others have similar requirements?
>
I seem to be the one mostly maintaining Pod:Simple these days. I think
the design of Pod::Simple is basically sound. If you came up with
reasonable pull requests for either of those modules, I would apply them.
All those TODOs in the code are from the original author, I believe, and
they would be nice to have, but the code basically works and no one has
felt the need to spend the effort to implement them.
(Harald Jörg)
May 10, 2019, 12:00:21 AM5/10/19
to pod-p...@perl.org
Cheers,
haj
Mark Overmeer
May 10, 2019, 4:30:03 AM5/10/19
to Harald Jörg, pod-p...@perl.org
Hey Harald,
Somewhere in 2003, I had the same need. I suggested to get Pod to a
higher level, but people refused larger changes. So, I developed my own
Pod extension, which generates both clean HTML via templates and clean POD.
It is named 'OODoc' (because it was created before OpenOffice existed :-(
Additions:
- meaningfull element names: additional =method, =c_method, =function,
=option, =default, =requires, =example
- far more fine-grained references via an M<> tag: even refer to
specific named parameters of (maybe inherited) methods. In HTML,
those fine-grained refs work.
- extraction of the extended POD from the pm files, so manpage elements
can be added automatically: header, footer, inheritance relations,
inherited options and methods/functions.
- combining/merging information from various packages into one set of
HTML or man-pages.
- pluggable (extensible) parsers, page elements, and output generators.
For produced HTML see: http://perl.overmeer.net/mailbox/html/manuals/
(Yes, I should really spend some time on a modern style-sheet)
(I should convert the template to use ajax to replace frames)
For produced manpages, see
https://metacpan.org/pod/distribution/Mail-Box-IMAP4/lib/Mail/Box/IMAP4.pod
which is created by extraction from source
https://github.com/markov2/perl5-Mail-Box-IMAP4/blob/master/lib/Mail/Box/IMAP4.pm
For my MailBox suite of modules (about 1000 methods), OODoc generates
70k lines of Pod which before I have to maintain myself.
However... the fancier things you want to achieve, the more time you have
to spend on configuring it... that's the advantage of the traditional
Pod set-up. One of the reasons that I think I still am the only user of
OODoc ;-)
Maybe this helps you shaping your ideas.
MarkOv
* Harald Jörg (h...@posteo.de) [190505 22:59]:
Mark Overmeer MSc MARKOV Solutions
Ma...@Overmeer.net solu...@overmeer.net
http://Mark.Overmeer.net http://solutions.overmeer.net
(Harald Jörg)
May 10, 2019, 8:30:03 AM5/10/19
to Mark Overmeer, pod-p...@perl.org
Hi Mark,
you write:
> Somewhere in 2003, I had the same need. I suggested to get Pod to a
> higher level, but people refused larger changes. So, I developed my own
> Pod extension, which generates both clean HTML via templates and clean POD.
> It is named 'OODoc' (because it was created before OpenOffice existed :-(
Oh, I am aware of OODoc. I really like your standardized method of
documenting inheritance in your modules and *guess* this is another
benefit of your toolchain.
But actually, OODoc serves a different need. Right now, I don't plan to
*rewrite* the Pod of 100 modules: I just want to get the most out of the
*existing* Pod.
> [...]
single person to write a wonderful, rich replacement for Pod than for
the community to agree on enhancements to Pod. "Pod" is just one of the
areas where this has happened in Perl.
> Maybe this helps you shaping your ideas.
It sure does - on a less urgent, but maybe more important scale. The
topic is: How can we get the Perl community to accept change? But that
is beyond the scope of this thread :)
--
Cheers,
haj
you write:
> Somewhere in 2003, I had the same need. I suggested to get Pod to a
> higher level, but people refused larger changes. So, I developed my own
> Pod extension, which generates both clean HTML via templates and clean POD.
> It is named 'OODoc' (because it was created before OpenOffice existed :-(
documenting inheritance in your modules and *guess* this is another
benefit of your toolchain.
But actually, OODoc serves a different need. Right now, I don't plan to
*rewrite* the Pod of 100 modules: I just want to get the most out of the
*existing* Pod.
> [...]
> However... the fancier things you want to achieve, the more time you have
> to spend on configuring it... that's the advantage of the traditional
> Pod set-up. One of the reasons that I think I still am the only user of
> OODoc ;-)
Yeah - that's what I call The Curse Of TIMTOWTDI: It is easier for one
> to spend on configuring it... that's the advantage of the traditional
> Pod set-up. One of the reasons that I think I still am the only user of
> OODoc ;-)
single person to write a wonderful, rich replacement for Pod than for
the community to agree on enhancements to Pod. "Pod" is just one of the
areas where this has happened in Perl.
> Maybe this helps you shaping your ideas.
topic is: How can we get the Perl community to accept change? But that
is beyond the scope of this thread :)
--
Cheers,
haj
(Harald Jörg)
May 10, 2019, 4:00:02 PM5/10/19
to Karl Williamson, pod-p...@perl.org
Karl Williamson <pub...@khwilliamson.com> writes:
> [...]
the formatting part can turn into a can of worms with regard to
different tastes how things should look like or behave. It seems that
the Pods I'm dealing with are somewhat non-standard, so I don't think
that changing the behaviour of the existing formatters is justified.
For now, I've submitted a pull request for a few of those documentation
TODOs where I had to open the source to see what's available.
Maybe I'll get to that problem of nested 'a' elements later, but since
browsers don't really choke on that, it isn't too high on my list.
--
Cheers,
haj
> [...]
> I seem to be the one mostly maintaining Pod:Simple these days. I
> think the design of Pod::Simple is basically sound. If you came up
> with reasonable pull requests for either of those modules, I would
> apply them.
>
> All those TODOs in the code are from the original author, I believe,
> and they would be nice to have, but the code basically works and no
> one has felt the need to spend the effort to implement them.
Indeed, the parser in Pod::Simple is pretty easy to use. I guess that
> think the design of Pod::Simple is basically sound. If you came up
> with reasonable pull requests for either of those modules, I would
> apply them.
>
> All those TODOs in the code are from the original author, I believe,
> and they would be nice to have, but the code basically works and no
> one has felt the need to spend the effort to implement them.
the formatting part can turn into a can of worms with regard to
different tastes how things should look like or behave. It seems that
the Pods I'm dealing with are somewhat non-standard, so I don't think
that changing the behaviour of the existing formatters is justified.
For now, I've submitted a pull request for a few of those documentation
TODOs where I had to open the source to see what's available.
Maybe I'll get to that problem of nested 'a' elements later, but since
browsers don't really choke on that, it isn't too high on my list.
--
Cheers,
haj
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