John Siracusa wrote:
>
> POD is supposed
> to be the common format that can be transformed into other representations.
> Instead, you have to add the different representations yourself if you do
> anything remotely complex.
No, POD is supposed to be simple. It addresses a very small, common subset
of the structuring capabilities of other languages like man or html.
It should be possible to translate pod into *ANY* other document structuring
language. If you add (e.g.) support for tables, then pod is only translatable
into languages which also support tables. THAT's why pod has to give you
an escape into other languages, via =for/=begin.
> People are looking for POD alternatives because doing complex things in POD
> is so hard and/or annoying.
Complex things should not be done in POD.
> some standard format that is rich enough to be converted to anything:
But you've got it wrong: only a SIMPLE format can be translated into "anything".
> format that can handle complex items like tables and hyperlinks and embedded
> images and all that good stuff.
Well, it's not pod that does that; it's the converter.
And a converter to handle L<links>, IMG<images>, etc., could be written.
> So people
> stick to Plain Old POD, sans fancy =for business, 90% of the time.
Yes - as it was meant to be.
--
John Porter
By pressing down a special key It plays a little melody
