# SNOPEA(7) | CSNOBOL4B 2.3.2 | Janurary 1, 2024

## NAME

snopea – A little “Plain Old Documentation” format for SNOBOL4

## DESCRIPTION

snopea is a simple-to-use markup language used for writing documentation for SNOBOL4, SNOBOL4 programs, and SNOBOL4 modules, inspired by perlpod(1). The snopea(1) command translates snopea to *roff man(7) macro format or HTML.

A line that starts with zero or more star/asterisk (*) characters followed by =pea signals start of a block of documentation. All lines until a =cut directive will be processed after removal of leading star/asterisk characters.

New paragraphs are started with a blank line.

## FORMATTING

B<text>
  text is formatted in bold.

I<text>
  text is formatted in italic.

C<text>
  text is formatted in `constant width`.

L<url>
  url is formatted as an HTML link.

## DIRECTIVES

=break
  Inserts a line break.

=bull text
  Indicates a bullet item in a list.

=code
  Starts a block of code, lines will be formatted in a constant-width font, and line breaks will be preserved.

=cut
  Signals end of a block of documentation.

=ecode
  Ends a =code block.

=etable
  Ends a table.

=item label
  A list item with tag label.

=indent number
  Controls the indentation of =item paragraphs.

=nitem text
  A numbered list item with tag label.

=row columns
  A table row. columns is a tab separated list.

=sect name
  Declares man page section name.

=subsect name
  Declares man page subsection name.

=table tab stops
  Begin a table, setting tab stops, a sequence of positions in inches, each followed by i (ie; 1i 2i 3i)

## SPECIAL CHARACTERS

The following sequences (an unholy mix of troff(1) and HTML) MUST be used for portable formatting:

``
  left double quote (“)

''
  right double quote (”)

&amp;
  ampersand (&)

&pi;
  greek lower-case pi (π)

&lt;
  less than sign (<)

&gt;
  greater than sign (>)

\e
  backslash (\)

\`
  accent grave (`)

\'
  apostrophe (')

\-
  en-dash

\&
  zero-width space

\|
  thin space

\~
  non-breaking space

\=
  equals-sign

## NOT CONFORMING TO

Inspired by (but not compatible with) Perl POD format. https://perldoc.perl.org/perlpod.html https://perldoc.perl.org/perlpodspec.html

## AUTHOR

Philip L. Budne

## SEE ALSO

snobol4(1), snopea(1), perlpod(1), perlpodspec(1).