---
name: "Pod::Simple::HTML"
section: "3p"
platform: "openbsd"
package: "man"
version: "8.0-current-20261101"
release: "OpenBSD 8.0-current (2026-11-01)"
platforms: ["openbsd"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/Pod::Simple::HTML"
---

# Pod::Simple::HTML(3p)

convert Pod to HTML

## NAME

Pod::Simple::HTML - convert Pod to HTML

## SYNOPSIS

```
  perl -MPod::Simple::HTML -e Pod::Simple::HTML::go thingy.pod
```

## DESCRIPTION

This class is for making an HTML rendering of a Pod document.

This is a subclass of Pod::Simple::PullParser and inherits all its methods (and options).

Note that if you want to do a batch conversion of a lot of Pod documents to HTML, you should see the module Pod::Simple::HTMLBatch.

## CALLING FROM THE COMMAND LINE

TODO

```
  perl -MPod::Simple::HTML -e Pod::Simple::HTML::go Thing.pod Thing.html
```

## CALLING FROM PERL

### Minimal code

```
  use Pod::Simple::HTML;
  my $p = Pod::Simple::HTML->new;
  $p->output_string(\my $html);
  $p->parse_file('path/to/Module/Name.pm');
  open my $out, '>', 'out.html' or die "Cannot open 'out.html': $!\n";
  print $out $html;
```

### More detailed example

```
  use Pod::Simple::HTML;
```

Set the content type:

```
  $Pod::Simple::HTML::Content_decl =  q{<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" >};
  my $p = Pod::Simple::HTML->new;
```

Include a single javascript source:

```
  $p->html_javascript('http://abc.com/a.js');
```

Or insert multiple javascript source in the header (or for that matter include anything, thought this is not recommended)

```
  $p->html_javascript('
      <script type="text/javascript" src="http://abc.com/b.js"></script>
      <script type="text/javascript" src="http://abc.com/c.js"></script>');
```

Include a single css source in the header:

```
  $p->html_css('/style.css');
```

or insert multiple css sources:

```
  $p->html_css('
      <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" title="pod_stylesheet" href="http://remote.server.com/jquery.css">
      <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" title="pod_stylesheet" href="/style.css">');
```

Tell the parser where should the output go. In this case it will be placed in the `$html` variable:

```
  my $html;
  $p->output_string(\$html);
```

Parse and process a file with pod in it:

```
  $p->parse_file('path/to/Module/Name.pm');
```

## METHODS

TODO all (most?) accessorized methods

The following variables need to be set **before** the call to the -\>new constructor.

Set the string that is included before the opening \<html\> tag:

```
  $Pod::Simple::HTML::Doctype_decl = qq{<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
    "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">\n};
```

Set the content-type in the HTML head: (defaults to ISO-8859-1)

```
  $Pod::Simple::HTML::Content_decl =  q{<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" >};
```

Set the value that will be embedded in the opening tags of F, C tags and verbatim text. F maps to \<em\>, C maps to \<code\>, Verbatim text maps to \<pre\> (Computerese defaults to "")

```
  $Pod::Simple::HTML::Computerese =  ' class="some_class_name';
```

### html\_css

### html\_javascript

### title\_prefix

### title\_postfix

### html\_header\_before\_title

This includes everything before the \<title\> opening tag including the Document type and including the opening \<title\> tag. The following call will set it to be a simple HTML file:

```
  $p->html_header_before_title('<html><head><title>');
```

### top\_anchor

By default Pod::Simple::HTML adds a dummy anchor at the top of the HTML. You can change it by calling

```
  $p->top_anchor('<a name="zz" >');
```

### html\_h\_level

Normally =head1 will become \<h1\>, =head2 will become \<h2\> etc. Using the html\_h\_level method will change these levels setting the h level of =head1 tags:

```
  $p->html_h_level(3);
```

Will make sure that =head1 will become \<h3\> and =head2 will become \<h4\> etc...

### index

Set it to some true value if you want to have an index (in reality a table of contents) to be added at the top of the generated HTML.

```
  $p->index(1);
```

### html\_header\_after\_title

Includes the closing tag of \</title\> and through the rest of the head till the opening of the body

```
  $p->html_header_after_title('</title>...</head><body id="my_id">');
```

### html\_footer

The very end of the document:

```
  $p->html_footer( qq[\n<!-- end doc -->\n\n</body></html>\n] );
```

## SUBCLASSING

Can use any of the methods described above but for further customization one needs to override some of the methods:

```
  package My::Pod;
  use strict;
  use warnings;
  use base 'Pod::Simple::HTML';
  # needs to return a URL string such
  # http://some.other.com/page.html
  # #anchor_in_the_same_file
  # /internal/ref.html
  sub do_pod_link {
    # My::Pod object and Pod::Simple::PullParserStartToken object
    my ($self, $link) = @_;
    say $link->tagname;          # will be L for links
    say $link->attr('to');       #
    say $link->attr('type');     # will be 'pod' always
    say $link->attr('section');
    # Links local to our web site
    if ($link->tagname eq 'L' and $link->attr('type') eq 'pod') {
      my $to = $link->attr('to');
      if ($to =~ /^Padre::/) {
          $to =~ s{::}{/}g;
          return "/docs/Padre/$to.html";
      }
    }
    # all other links are generated by the parent class
    my $ret = $self->SUPER::do_pod_link($link);
    return $ret;
  }
  1;
```

Meanwhile in script.pl:

```
  use My::Pod;
  my $p = My::Pod->new;
  my $html;
  $p->output_string(\$html);
  $p->parse_file('path/to/Module/Name.pm');
  open my $out, '>', 'out.html' or die;
  print $out $html;
```

TODO

maybe override do\_beginning do\_end

## SEE ALSO

Pod::Simple, Pod::Simple::HTMLBatch

TODO: a corpus of sample Pod input and HTML output?  Or common idioms?

## SUPPORT

Questions or discussion about POD and Pod::Simple should be sent to the pod-people@perl.org mail list. Send an empty email to pod-people-subscribe@perl.org to subscribe.

This module is managed in an open GitHub repository, \<https://github.com/perl-pod/pod-simple/\>. Feel free to fork and contribute, or to clone \<https://github.com/perl-pod/pod-simple.git\> and send patches!

Patches against Pod::Simple are welcome. Please send bug reports to \<bug-pod-simple@rt.cpan.org\>.

## COPYRIGHT AND DISCLAIMERS

Copyright (c) 2002-2004 Sean M. Burke.

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

This program 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.

## ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to Hurricane Electric \<http://he.net/\> for permission to use its Linux man pages online \<http://man.he.net/\> site for man page links.

Thanks to search.cpan.org \<http://search.cpan.org/\> for permission to use the site for Perl module links.

## AUTHOR

Pod::Simple was created by Sean M. Burke \<sburke@cpan.org\>. But don't bother him, he's retired.

Pod::Simple is maintained by:

- •

  Allison Randal `"allison@perl.org"`

- •

  Hans Dieter Pearcey `"hdp@cpan.org"`

- •

  David E. Wheeler `"dwheeler@cpan.org"`