POD::TEXT::OVERSTRIKE(3pm)

💖 NAME 💖

okay so welcome to Pod::Text::Overstrike(3pm), bestie — this little icon lives in the Perl Programmers Reference Guide and its whole job is literally: Convert POD data to formatted overstrike text. no cap.

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

here's the vibe in code, exactly as it comes:

use Pod::Text::Overstrike;
my $parser = Pod::Text::Overstrike->new (sentence => 0, width => 78);

# Read POD from STDIN and write to STDOUT.
$parser->parse_from_filehandle;

# Read POD from file.pod and write to file.txt.
$parser->parse_from_file ('file.pod', 'file.txt');

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🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

Pod::Text::Overstrike is a simple subclass of Pod::Text that highlights output text using overstrike sequences, in a manner similar to nroff. ✨

Characters in bold text are overstruck as character, backspace, character, and characters in underlined text are converted to overstruck underscores as underscore, backspace, character. This format was originally designed for hard-copy terminals and/or line printers, yet is readable on soft-copy (CRT) terminals. 💅

Overstruck text is best viewed by page-at-a-time programs that take advantage of the terminal's stand-out and underline capabilities, such as the less program on Unix. 🫶

Apart from the overstrike, it in all ways functions like Pod::Text. See Pod::Text for details and available options.

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💀 BUGS 💀

Currently, the outermost formatting instruction wins, so for example underlined text inside a region of bold text is displayed as simply bold. There may be some better approach possible. 😭

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🦋 COMPATIBILITY 🦋

Pod::Text::Overstrike 1.01 (based on Pod::Parser) was the first version of this module included with Perl, in Perl 5.6.1. 🎀

The current API based on Pod::Simple was added in Pod::Text::Overstrike 2.00, included in Perl 5.9.3.

Several problems with wrapping and line length were fixed as recently as Pod::Text::Overstrike 6.0.0.

This module inherits its API and most behavior from Pod::Text, so the details in COMPATIBILITY in Pod::Text also apply. Pod::Text and Pod::Text::Overstrike have had the same module version since 4.00, included in Perl 5.23.7. (They unfortunately diverge in confusing ways prior to that.) 🙈

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🎀 CAVEATS 🎀

Line wrapping is done only at ASCII spaces and tabs, rather than using a correct Unicode-aware line wrapping algorithm. ⭐

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👑 AUTHOR 👑

Originally written by Joe Smith Joe.Smith@inwap.com, using the framework created by Russ Allbery rra@cpan.org. Subsequently updated by Russ Allbery. 💜

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📜 COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE 📜

Copyright 2000 Joe Smith Joe.Smith@inwap.com

Copyright 2001, 2004, 2008, 2014, 2018-2019, 2022, 2024 Russ Allbery rra@cpan.org

This program is free software; you may redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. 🌈

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🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

• Pod::Text
• Pod::Simple

The current version of this module is always available from its web site at https://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/software/podlators/. It is also part of the Perl core distribution as of 5.6.0. 🦋

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💖 that's the whole page, bestie. sign-off from the Pod::Text::Overstrike(3pm) manual: generated as part of perl v5.42.3, dated 2026-11-03. periodt. 💅