POD -> DocBook?

[Tom_Roche@ncsu.edu]

I'm working on a large, mostly undocumented, virtually all-Perl
project. I've been documenting my new code in POD, about which I know:

perldoc perlpod
> For, begin, and end let you include sections that are not
> interpreted as pod text, but passed directly to particular
> formatters. A formatter that can utilize that format will use the
> section, otherwise it will be completely ignored. <snip> Some format
> names that formatters currently are known to accept include "roff",
> "man", "latex", "tex", "text", and "html". (Some formatters will
> treat some of these as synonyms.)

However, I've been interested in DocBook (esp as implemented in XML),
and some groups affiliated with this project are doing much more with
it. This has caused me to wonder if one could do something like this:

> <!DOCTYPE book PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook V3.1//EN" [
> <!ENTITY module1 SYSTEM "module1.pm">
> <!ENTITY module2 SYSTEM "module2.pm">
> <!ENTITY code3 SYSTEM "code3.pl">
> <!ENTITY appa SYSTEM "appa.sgm">
> <!ENTITY appb SYSTEM "appb.sgm">
> ]>

> <book><title>Our Software</title>
> &module1;
> &module2;
> &code3;
> &appa;
> &appb;
> </book>

In other words, I'd like to have a DocBook formatter to which I could
just pass PODed Perl. It doesn't seem like brain surgery, but then
I've very little hands-on experience with DocBook.

Can this be done? Has anyone done anything like this? Is there a
better way? Your comments and suggestions are appreciated; DTDs and
stylesheets would be thrilling :-)

Please reply directly to me as well as the list/group, and TIA,
Tom_Roche@ncsu.edu