| Subject: | pod2pandoc POD-to-HTML conversion ignores '=encoding' directive |
The POD-to-HTML converter used by pod2pandoc fails to honor an '=encoding utf8' directive at the head of a file composed in .pod format. No "Content-Type" header is set in the output file. As a consequence, characters which need HTML encoding may be rendered inaccurately by certain web browser/server combinations.
Consider the following program:
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$ cat reading-list.pod
=encoding utf8
=head1 Reading List
Fanny Pigeaud and Ndongo Samba Sylla, I<L'Arme Invisible de la Françafrique:
Une Histoire du Franc CFA>, La Decouverte, 2018. (In French)
=cut
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Run this program through 'pod2pandoc':
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pod2pandoc ./reading-list.pod -o ./reading-list.html
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Here is the output:
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$ cat reading-list.html
<h1 id="reading-list">Reading List</h1>
<p>Fanny Pigeaud and Ndongo Samba Sylla, <em>L'Arme Invisible de la Françafrique: Une Histoire du Franc CFA</em>, La Decouverte, 2018. (In French)</p>
#####
Note that the file contains no tag setting the 'charset'. Indeed, it sets no 'Content-Type' header at all. I would have expected something like this tag at the start of the file:
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<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
#####
Now, on my laptop, notwithstanding the absence of a 'charset' attribute, the c-cedilla in 'Françafrique' renders correctly. However, once I 'scp' this .html file to a server to which I have access, the c-cedilla fails to render correctly. See: http://thenceforward.net/perl/misc/reading-list.html.
If I go to that server and manually insert the 'meta' tag listed above into the HTML (copying then renaming the file), the c-cedilla renders correctly. See: http://thenceforward.net/perl/misc/reading-list-corrected.html.
I do not experience this problem with the POD-to-txt, POD-to-pdf or POD-to-odt converters used by 'pod2pandoc'.
The POD-to-HTML conversion process used by 'pod2pandoc' needs to be revised to take into account any '=encoding utf8' directive and include the corresponding 'charset' attribute in the .html output.
Thank you very much.
Jim Keenan