sorry, jim, i'm just a kindergartner when it comes to perl, so i'm not sure i can help with any debugging, but i'll try...
Name "main::allow_html" used only once:
that was code i just pulled in, but i didn't "allow html", so, practically, you can throw out that loop altogether... (but also see the note below.)
Name "main::FORM" used only once: possible typo at C:\JIM\Perl\bbunwrap.pl line 18.
that construct is just to split the buffer, so you don't really need it. the only variable of any interest is "theinput", so just strip "theinput=" off the buffer and you're good. note that $theinput is then dumped into $thebook. (but also see the note below.)
Use of uninitialized value in read at C:
that command reads the buffer that's submitted to the script when it's mounted on a website, so you'll have to rewrite it if you wanna run it offline, which is what it appears you are trying to do here. read this note: what you would do instead (and it nullifies all of the errors that we've discussed so far, is to open the text-file on your machine, put it into $thebook, and proceed to this line:
print "content-type: text/html\n\n";
Use of uninitialized value $thebook in string eq at C:\JIM\Perl\bbunwrap.pl line 24.
looks like your version of perl wants the variables to be initialized, so just go ahead and do that... -bowerbird