NAME
Pod::Spell -- a formatter for spellchecking Pod
SYNOPSIS
% podspell Thing.pm | ispell
or if you don't have a podspell:
% perl -MPod::Spell -e "Pod::Spell->new->parse_from_file(shift)" Thing.pm |spell |fmt
or:
% perl -MPod::Spell -e "Pod::Spell->new->parse_from_filehandle"
...which takes POD on STDIN and sends formatted text to STDOUT
....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
(codeblocks), 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.
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 "virtù". If you left the ":"
out, that'd 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:
* 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.
* 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.
* 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.
* 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.
COPYRIGHT AND DISCLAIMER
Copyright (c) 2001 Sean M. Burke. All rights reserved.
This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the same terms as Perl itself.
The programs and documentation in this dist are distributed in the hope
that they will be useful, but without any warranty; without even the
implied warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
AUTHOR
Sean M. Burke `[EMAIL PROTECTED]'
NAME
Pod::Wordlist -- English words that come up in Perl documentation
SYNOPSIS
None! Take that!
ABOUT
Pod::Wordlist is used by Pod::Spell, providing a set of words (as keys
in the hash `%Pod::Spell::Wordlist') that are English jargon words that
come up in Perl documentation, but which are not to be found in general
English lexicons. (For example: autovivify, backreference, chroot,
stringify, wantarray.)
You can also use this wordlist with your word processor by just pasting
`Pod/Wordlist.pm''s content into your wordprocessor, deleting the
leading Perl code so that only the wordlist remains, and then
spellchecking this resulting list and adding every word in it to your
private lexicon.
CONTRIBUTING
You are welcome to send me your wordlists too, for possible
incorporation into this wordlist. I can take them only in ASCII.
Note that the scope of this file is only English, specifically American
English. (But you may find in useful to incorporate into your own
lexicons, even if they are for other dialects/languages.)
COPYRIGHT AND DISCLAIMER
Copyright (c) 2001 Sean M. Burke. All rights reserved.
This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the same terms as Perl itself.
This library is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
without any warranty; without even the implied warranty of
merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.
AUTHOR
Sean M. Burke, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[NB: This wordlist includes much of a wordlist that Mark-Jason Dominus
gave me.]
--
Sean M. Burke [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.spinn.net/~sburke/
