I'm using POD to document some Perl code-- a library w/ a bunch of functions.

For clarity, I want to put each function's documentation next to the
function itself. I don't want to combine all the documentation at the
start or end of the library. I realize perldoc doesn't care where the
documentation is, but it seems easier to maintain with the
documentation next to the function.

My "problem": to document a one-line function, I have to do this:

=item make_ref(URL,TEXT)

Return string to make text a hyperlink to URL

=cut
sub make_ref {return "$_[1]"}

It takes 5 lines of POD to document one line of code? Ouch!

That's a lot of screen real estate when viewing the file in emacs.

Is there a shortcut? Can I make this work somehow?:

=item make_ref(URL,TEXT)
Return string to make text a hyperlink to URL
=cut

I know POD requires blank lines, but is there a workaround to avoid this?

Ideally, I'd like something like