= Ruby Q.E.D.

      homepage: http://proutils.rubyforge.org/qed
  mailing list: http://groups.google.com/group/tigerops-community
   development: http://github.com/proutils/qed/tree/master


== Introduction

Q.E.D. is an abbreviation for the well known Latin phrase "Quod Erat Demonstrandum",
literally "which was to be demonstrated", which is oft written in its abbreviated
form at the end of a mathematical proof or philosophical argument to signify the
successful completion of a proof.

And so it for Ruby Q.E.D., which might also be taken to stand for
Quality Ensured Documentation. 

Q.E.D. is in fact both a test framwork and a documentation system for Ruby
developers. QED sits somehwere between lower-level testing tools like Test::Unit
and grand requirement specifications tools like Cucumber. In pratice it works
best addressing <i>API-Driven Development</i>, which is especially useful when
designing reusable libraries.


== Features

* Demos can be RDoc, Markdown or any other conforming text format. 
* Uses the excellent Assertive Expressive library for assertion system.
* Helpers are easily loaded relative to running document.
* Table macro allows large sets of data to be run by the same code.
* Documentation tool provides nice output with jQuery-based TOC.


== Synopsis

=== Assertion Syntax

QED uses AE (Assertive Expressive) library to provide an elegant means to
express behaviors. To give a quick overview, you can use code such as:

    4.assert == 5

In this example, because 4 != 5, this expression will raise an Assertion
exception. QED's Runner class is thus just a means of running and capturing
code block containing these assertions.

You can learn more about AE at http://proutils.github.com/ae.

=== Document Structure

QED documents are simply text files --thus a practice of literate programming.
For example:

    = Example

    Shows that the number 5 does not equal 4.

        5.assert! == 4

    But in fact equals 5.

        5.assert == 5

As you can see, we used RDoc for this document. Almost any text format
can be used. The only necessary distinction is that description text
align to the left margin and all code be indented. However QED recognizes
RDoc and Markdown single-line style headers, so any format that supports
this style (which covers many markup formats in use today) will work a bit
better. While strictly speaking QED does not need to recognize headers,
it does improve console output.

Give this design some thought. It should become clear that this approach is
especially fruitful in that it allows *documentation* and *specification*
to seamlessly merge into a unified *demonstration*. 

=== Running Demonstrations

If we were to run the above document through QED in verbatim mode the output
would be identical (assuming we did not make a typo and the assertions passed).
If there were errors or failures, we would see information detailing each.

To run a document through QED, simply use the +qed+ command.

  $ qed -v demo/01_example.rdoc

The <tt>-v</tt> option specifies verbatim mode, which outputs the entire
document.

Notice we placed the QED document in the <tt>demo</tt> directory, this is
one of two conical place that has been designated for them (the other is test/demos),
though you can put them elsewhere in your project if you prefer. Also notice the
<tt>01_</tt> in front of the name. While this is not necessary, it helps order
the documents properly with generating QED documentation (QEDocs).

To generate documentation from QED documents, use the +qedoc+ command.

  $ qedoc --output doc/qedoc --title "Example" demo/*.rdoc

When documenting QED recognizes the format by the file extension and 
treats it accordingly. An extension of <tt>.qed</tt> is treated the same
as <tt>.rdoc</tt>.

Use the <tt>--help</tt> options on each command to get more information on
the use of these commands.


== Requirements

QED depends on the following external libraries:

  * AE     - Assertions Framework
  * ANSI   - ANSI Color Codes
  * Facets - Core Extensions

These will be automatically installed when installing QED via RubyGems,
if they are not already installed.


== Copyright and License

Q.E.D.

Copyright (c) 2007,2009 Thomas Sawyer

Unless otherwise permitted by the author, QED is distributed under the
terms of the GPL version 3 or greater. See COPYING file for details.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111-1307  USA