The 'boilerplate' in this case appears to be yours and others response to the question.
If you can't answer the damn question then don't. If you think there's a better alternative to the OP's choice of module, then be prepared to explain why it's a better choice and back up your recommendation with a code example demonstrating how it more easily answers the OP's question. And if that's too much work, then don't stuff the question with pointless answers.
You assume that the Anonymous Monk responding to your replies is the same Anonymous Monk who posted the question. It may well be, but as it's Anonymous Monk I don't think that's a safe conclusion to jump to. There are pages and pages of 'how not to ask a question' information to be found on PerlMonks, yet there's not one word on 'how to answer a question'. The initial question was fairly asked. It was properly formatted with (IMO) clear questions and a good code example. Yet no one seems to be able to answer it without a "use this module instead" response. This wasn't some vague "what module should I use" question, it was a question about a specific module and a specific piece of code. The OP put far more time and thought into the question than you bothered to put into your response, despite you're accusations that he/she can't be bothered to use Google or rtfm.
My assumption about the response by Anonymous Monk was that it was intended to make a point about thinly disguised answers that answer nothing at all. But that's just an assumption on my part. Maybe Anonymous Monk really is just a putz who just wants PerlMonks to write his/her code for them.
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Before getting too enamored of your belief that we should offer corrections to the code in the OP, note that OP's script appears (to me, anyway) to hew closely to the example code in the Synopsis at http://search.cpan.org/~mfrankl/HTML-HTMLDoc-0.07/lib/HTML/HTMLDoc.pm ... but still fails.
That, alone, seems to me a good reason to suggest alternatives... especially when the offers came from respected Monks who assert some familiarity with how to achieve the bottom-line objective.
Then, seen the open bug list etc at CPAN RT.
And what you're assuming in regard to the "sample code" requests appears to be no better supported than the assumption (about authorship) which you (correctly) ascribe to me. Your line of thought hadn't occured to me, but upon mature possibly jejune reflection, I regard it as improbable. I may be wrong, but then, I'm not alone in being wrong (and in these cases, not on points open to varying interpretation):
"... despite you're accusations that he/she can't be bothered to use Google or rtfm."
My suggestion that OP read the docs was not, technically, an accusation. It certainly implies, or lends itself to the inference that I suspect OP has not followed up on any of the alternatives offered by other respondents, but -- narrowly -- is *NOT* an accusation.
OTOH, narrowly or otherwise, the "you're" in the quoted snippet should be "your."
Best regards.
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