Re: Any handy way to read perldoc output

[Alan <wehmann@fnal.gov>]

On Feb 1, 8:56 am, k...@freefriends.org (Karl Berry) wrote:
>     Is there any handy way to read perldoc output in emacs?
>     An i (index) search of emacs manual on `perldoc' showed nothing.
>
> Besides perldoc -t that Xah mentioned, there is a pod2texinfo program
> (http://search.cpan.org/~randym/pod2texinfo-1.0/) but it has not been
> updated since 1998.  
>
> I personally would very much like to have the main Perl documentation as
> a Texinfo manual, but have never been able to spend the time on it.
> Just running pod2texinfo did not suffice, it needed work beyond that.
> If anyone finds or produces something for the current perl manuals,
> please let me know.
>
> k...@freefriends.org

I made a serious effort to find Perl documentation in texinfo form
that was reasonably up-to-date.  I concluded that I'd have to do much
of the work myself.  At "http://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/
texinfo.html" there is mention of "man2texi", which is an awk script
to convert from nroff source code (man pages) to texinfo.  I've been
using a modified form of "man2texi" to make the conversion, but there
is a lot of extra custom effort involved (additional effort is needed
for cross-linking references, which are often a matter of taste).
Plus I haven't done all the Perl man pages; so far I've concentrated
on the ones I regard as most useful.  My platform is MS Windows XP.
The Perl and Perl man nroff source code come via Cygwin.  One extra
wrinkle is that I've arranged that the resulting Info files preserve
the bolding found on the man pages.  Also, it is sometimes necessary
to use POD to get nroff source code to feed to "man2texi".  A
necessary disclosure is that I use XEmacs--due to personal historical
reasons.