Extension:POD

What can this extension do?
This extension takes input in POD format, and converts it to HTML. Thus you can edit POD inside a wiki, and directly see the result.

This ties together several tools and creates a sort of IDE (Integrated Development Environment) for POD:

Browser
The browser supplies:


 * the HTML-rendering,
 * clickable links,
 * spell-checking

Pod-Extension
By using Pod::Simple and some custom transformations, it brings:


 * instant POD check for correctness
 * correct formatting in HTML and working links
 * keyword display
 * collapsable table of contents
 * language selection (for multi-language documents)

The Wiki

 * central storage,
 * version control,
 * user management,
 * visual diffs

Usage
Type your POD text between  tags:

=head1 NAME

=head2 Some Headline

This is a test.

Custom POD
You can also embed custom POD paragraphs like the following:

=begin graph graph { flow: down; } node { fill: thistle; } [ POD | POD (graph) ] { basename: pod; } [ pod.0 ] -- Mediawiki::POD --> [ HTML ] { fill: lavender; size: 2,0; } [ pod.1 ] -- Graph::Easy --> [ HTML ] =end graph

which will be rendering as "image" (either HTML, SVG, or PNG).

Installation
Download the extension from http://search.cpan.org/~tels/Mediawiki-POD, and install it into according to the README file.

PHP 4.x vs. 5.x
Th extension was developed and tested with PHP 4.x. If you are using Mediawiki 1.8.x or better, then you are also using PHP 5.x. In this case you need to modify the extension, as it uses proc_open, which was sadly changed in an incompatible way between PHP versions.

Notes under 5.1.2
(line 56) add:
 * I had no problem with proc_open.
 * however I did get a "variable undefined" warning at line 57. This can be fixed by initialising $output in renderPOD; just bafore

Parameters
This extension doesn't take any parameters except the input text between &lt;pod&gt; and &lt;/pod&gt;.

Changes to LocalSettings.php
Add this line to your LocalSettings.php:

include_once('extensions/POD.php');