Pod::Spell(3) User Contributed Perl Documentation Pod::Spell(3)
NAME
Pod::Spell - a formatter for spellchecking Pod
VERSION
version 1.04
SYNOPSIS
use Pod::Spell;
Pod::Spell->new->parse_from_file( 'File.pm' );
Pod::Spell->new->parse_from_filehandle( $infile, $outfile );
Also look at podspell
% perl -MPod::Spell -e "Pod::Spell->new->parse_from_file(shift)" Thing.pm |spell |fmt
...or instead of piping to spell or "ispell", use ">temp.txt", and open temp.txt in your word processor for spell-checking.
DESCRIPTION
Pod::Spell is a Pod formatter whose output is good for spellchecking. Pod::Spell rather like Pod::Text, except that it doesn't put much
effort into actual formatting, and it suppresses things that look like Perl symbols or Perl jargon (so that your spellchecking program
won't complain about mystery words like "$thing" or ""Foo::Bar"" or "hashref").
This class provides no new public methods. All methods of interest are inherited from Pod::Parser (which see). The especially interesting
ones are "parse_from_filehandle" (which without arguments takes from STDIN and sends to STDOUT) and "parse_from_file". But you can
probably just make do with the examples in the synopsis though.
This class works by filtering out words that look like Perl or any form of computerese (like "$thing" or ""N>7"" or
""@{$foo}{'bar','baz'}"", anything in C<...> or F<...> codes, anything in verbatim paragraphs (code blocks), and anything in the stopword
list. The default stopword list for a document starts out from the stopword list defined by Pod::Wordlist, and can be supplemented (on a
per-document basis) by having "=for stopwords" / "=for :stopwords" region(s) in a document.
METHODS
new
command
interior_sequence
textblock
verbatim
ADDING STOPWORDS
You can add stopwords on a per-document basis with "=for stopwords" / "=for :stopwords" regions, like so:
=for stopwords plok Pringe zorch snik !qux
foo bar baz quux quuux
This adds every word in that paragraph after "stopwords" to the stopword list, effective for the rest of the document. In such a list,
words are whitespace-separated. (The amount of whitespace doesn't matter, as long as there's no blank lines in the middle of the
paragraph.) Words beginning with "!" are deleted from the stopword list -- so "!qux" deletes "qux" from the stopword list, if it was in
there in the first place. Note that if a stopword is all-lowercase, then it means that it's okay in any case; but if the word has any
capital letters, then it means that it's okay only with that case. So a Wordlist entry of "perl" would permit "perl", "Perl", and (less
interestingly) "PERL", "pERL", "PerL", et cetera. However, a Wordlist entry of "Perl" catches only "Perl", not "perl". So if you wanted
to make sure you said only "Perl", never "perl", you could add this to the top of your document:
=for stopwords !perl Perl
Then all instances of the word "Perl" would be weeded out of the Pod::Spell-formatted version of your document, but any instances of the
word "perl" would be left in (unless they were in a C<...> or F<...> style).
You can have several "=for stopwords" regions in your document. You can even express them like so:
=begin stopwords
plok Pringe zorch
snik !qux
foo bar
baz quux quuux
=end stopwords
If you want to use E<...> sequences in a "stopwords" region, you have to use ":stopwords", as here:
=for :stopwords
virtE<ugrave>
...meaning that you're adding a stopword of "virtu". If you left the ":" out, that would mean you were adding a stopword of
"virtE<ugrave>" (with a literal E, a literal <, etc), which will have no effect, since any occurrences of virtE<ugrave> don't look like a
normal human-language word anyway, and so would be screened out before the stopword list is consulted anyway.
USING Pod::Spell
My personal advice:
o Write your documentation in Pod. Pod is described in perlpod. And perlmodstyle has some advice on content. This is the stage where
you want to make sure you say everything you should, have good and working examples, and have coherent grammar.
o Run it through podchecker. This will report all sorts of problems with your Pod; you may choose to ignore some of these problems.
Some, like "*** WARNING: Unknown entity E<qacute>...", you should pay attention to.
o Once podchecker errors have been tended to, spellcheck the pod by running it through podspell / Pod::Spell. For any misspellings that
are reported in the Pod::Spell-formatted text, fix them in the original. Repeat until there's no complaints.
o Run it through podchecker again just for good measure.
SEE ALSO
Pod::Wordlist
Pod::Parser
podchecker also known as Pod::Checker
perlpod, perlpodspec
HINT
If you feed output of Pod::Spell into your word processor and run a spell-check, make sure you're not also running a grammar-check --
because Pod::Spell drops words that it thinks are Perl symbols, jargon, or stopwords, this means you'll have ungrammatical sentences, what
with words being missing and all. And you don't need a grammar checker to tell you that.
BUGS
Please report any bugs or feature requests on the bugtracker website https://github.com/xenoterracide/pod-spell/issues
When submitting a bug or request, please include a test-file or a patch to an existing test-file that illustrates the bug or desired
feature.
AUTHORS
o Sean M. Burke <sburke@cpan.org>
o Caleb Cushing <xenoterracide@gmail.com>
COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
This software is Copyright (c) 2013 by Caleb Cushing.
This is free software, licensed under:
The Artistic License 2.0 (GPL Compatible)
perl v5.16.3 2013-05-09 Pod::Spell(3)