When I use watch to follow a perlpod documentation i am writing, the formatting gets mangeled (see NAME and Synopsis sections):Every 2,0s: perldoc lib/Uki/Handlers/SOS.pm                                                   Tue Apr  8 10:42:43 2014Uki::Handlers::SOS(3) User Contributed Perl DocumentationUki::Handlers::SOS(3)N NA AM ME E       Uki::Handlers::SOS - Studenten-HandlerS Sy yn no op ps si is s       SOS-spezifische Spezialisierung des Uki::Handlers::Person-Handlers.I think this is due to nroff thinking the output terminal is not a TTY, but I don't know how to tell it that, infact, it is a TTY.
watch perldoc output preserving formatting
perl;watch
You are right, your issue is the rendering of the beautification done by nroff/groff.To avoid this beautification, bypass nroff/groff and output your pod documentation into text with pod2text (this is a part of Perl distrib, so you should have it):watch pod2text <your_perl_withpod_file>