README for Pod::Spell
                                        Time-stamp: "2001-10-27 00:25:54 MDT"

[The Pod-Spell dist properly contains Pod::Spell and Pod::Wordlist]


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 "virt". 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 `sburke@cpan.org'





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, sburke@cpan.org

    [NB: This wordlist includes much of a wordlist that Mark-Jason Dominus
    gave me.]



PREREQUISITES

This suite requires Perl 5, Pod::Parser, Pod::Escapes, and Text::Wrap.


INSTALLATION

You install Pod::Spell, as you would install any perl module
library, by running these commands:

   perl Makefile.PL
   make
   make test
   make install

If you want to install a private copy of Pod::Spell in your home
directory, then you should try to produce the initial Makefile with
something like this command:

  perl Makefile.PL LIB=~/perl

See "perldoc permodinstall" for more information


DOCUMENTATION

POD-format documentation is included in Escapes.pm and Wordlist.pod.
POD is readable with the 'perldoc' utility.  See ChangeLog for recent
changes.


MACPERL INSTALLATION NOTES

Don't bother with the makefiles.  Just make a Pod directory in your
MacPerl site_lib or lib directory, and move Spell.pm, Wordlist.pm, and
Wordlist.pod into there.


SUPPORT

Questions, bug reports, useful code bits, and suggestions for
Pod::Spell should just be sent to me at sburke@cpan.org


AVAILABILITY

The latest version of Pod::Spell is available from the
Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN).  Visit
<http://www.perl.com/CPAN/> to find a CPAN site near you.
