At 00:30 2002-07-22 -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
>[...]The problem that you're running into is that pod2html in the Perl
>distribution needs some serious loving attention.[...]

Well, not so much attention, as total replacement.  The current Pod::Html 
code is, frankly, the worst (semi-)working code that I've ever seen written 
in any high-level language -- with the one exception of the "Universal 
Bulletin Board" source code.

Incidentally, now that my book is finally done, I've been poking at my 
mostly-done perlpodspec-compliant Pod parser (to replace Pod::Parser), and 
it's going surprisingly well.  The first thing that I mean to do with it 
(as a proof of concept, notably) is write a new pod2html.  I think I 
mentioned this a few days ago, so sorry if I'm repeating myself.

>[...]Parsing POD into HTML can require different techniques than the 
>translators I've already written and is better suited for a tree-style 
>parse, and there are apparently new POD parsers coming up that will make 
>that easier.[...]

Yes, much much easier -- as easy as it should have been from the 
beginning!  The new Pod parser essentially makes the difference between a 
tree view and a token view a merely superficial interface question, instead 
of a substantial difference.
--
Sean M. Burke    http://www.spinn.net/~sburke/

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