In all Fortune 500 companies you are required to write software specifications documents. Even when not a process obligation, writing specs is a good practice according to Joelonsoftware.

But it’s usually time consuming. There are some heavy-weighted $$$$ softwares from IBM, Borland and others which can do so, but they are anti-productivity softwares.

Thanks to Rebol’s little gemware Makedoc2, you can write specs the agile way just using a simple notepad.

For example, you could write a spec like this one below (replace the generic parts with your own custom words for example replace by “My Super Projet”) with a simple notepad (see simple example here):

Software Requirements Specification for <%ProjectName%>

	Version 1.0 approved
	<%AuthorName%> - <%organization%> - <%date%>

History:

\table

Name

Date

Reason for change

Version

=row

<%authorname1%>

<%date1%>

<%reason-for-change1%>

<%version1%>

=row

<%authorname2%>

<%date2%>

<%reason-for-change2%>

<%version2%>

/table

===Introduction

---Purpose

<%{the product whose software requirements are specified in this document, including the revision or release number. Describe the scope of the product that is covered by this SRS, particularly if this SRS describes only part of the system or a single subsystem.}%>

---Project Scope

<%{Provide a short description of the software being specified and its purpose, including relevant benefits, objectives, and goals. Relate the software to corporate goals or business strategies. If a separate vision and scope document is available, refer to it rather than duplicating its contents here. An SRS that specifies the next release of an evolving product should contain its own scope statement as a subset of the long-term strategic product vision.}%>

===Overall Description

---Product Perspective

<%{Describe the context and origin of the product being specified in this SRS. For example, state whether this product is a follow-on member of a product family, a replacement for certain existing systems, or a new, self-contained product. If the SRS defines a component of a larger system, relate the requirements of the larger system to the functionality of this software and identify interfaces between the two. A simple diagram that shows the major components of the overall system, subsystem interconnections, and external interfaces can be helpful.}%>

---Product Features

<%{Summarize the major features the product contains or the significant functions that it performs or lets the user perform. Details will be provided in Section 3, so only a high level summary  is needed here. Organize the functions to make them understandable to any reader of the SRS. A picture of the major groups of related requirements and how they relate, such as a top level data flow diagram or a class diagram, is often effective.}%>

* Feature 1

* Feature 2

===System Features

<%{This template illustrates organizing the functional requirements for the product by system features, the major services provided by the product. You may prefer to organize this section by use case, mode of operation, user class, object class, functional hierarchy, or combinations of these, whatever makes the most logical sense for your product.}%>

---System Feature 1

<%{Don’t really say “System Feature 1.” State the feature name in just a few words.}%>

+++Description and Priority



+++Stimulus/Response Sequences

<%{List the sequences of user actions and system responses that stimulate the behavior defined for this feature. These will correspond to the dialog elements associated with use cases.}%>

#Step 1

#Step 2

#>Step 2.1

#>Step 2.2

#>>Step 2.2.1		

=image images/sequenceDiagramBasicCourse.jpg

After saving, run makedoc2.r (.r extension should be associated with Rebol) which will let you choose the file above in a file dialog. Confirm and the html document below will be generated (nothing will prevent you to copy and paste in a document afterwards):

In some next article, I’ll show you some advanced tips for generating specs with Makedoc2.

Update: for software design template see for example this one.

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If you need to generate a RSS Feed from scratch - for example for an html static website or a site which is not your own - you can of course download some softwares to do so but after trying many of them, I didn’t find them as productive as I wish so I decided to use my favorite scripting language to do so.

If you have followed past tutorials like this one, the script should be easy to understand so I won’t comment it as you should understand it by just reading the source code below. To test it, just copy and paste it in rebol’s console then type genrss and result should be copied to the clipboard.

datas: [
"Creating an OData API for StackOverflow including XML and JSON in 30 minutes"
http://www.hanselman.com/blog/CreatingAnODataAPIForStackOverflowIncludin...
{I emailed Jeff Atwood last night a one line email. "You should make a StackOverflow API using OData." Then I realized that, as Linus says, Talk is Cheap, Show me the Code. So I created an initial prototype of a StackOverflow API using OData on an Airplane. I allocated the whole 12 hour flight. Unfortunately it took 30 minutes so I watched movies the rest of the time.}
"2010-03-28 09:29"

"Web Deployment Made Awesome: If You're Using XCopy, You're Doing It Wrong"
http://www.hanselman.com/blog/WebDeploymentMadeAwesomeIfYoureUsingXCopyY...
{I did a talk on Deployment called "Web Deployment Made Awesome: If You're Using XCopy, You're Doing It Wrong." }
"2010-03-24 10:36"

"ASP.NET MVC 2 Released"
http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ASPNETMVC2Released.aspx
{ASP.NET MVC 2 is out. This means, it's released. It's final. Use it. Love it.

You can download it directly, or install it (and whatever else you like) with the Web Platform Installer.}
"2010-03-11 09:35"
]    

if exists? %datas.txt [
    datas: load %datas.txt
]

genrss: func[][

item-template: {    
      
      <%url%>
      <%description%>
      <%date%>
    
    }

  items: copy ""
  foreach [field-title field-url field-description field-date] datas [
    title: field-title
    url: field-url
    description: field-description
    date: field-date
    append items build-markup item-template
    append items newline
  ]

  template: {<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

  
    Sat, 03 Apr 2010 21:52:39 +0200
<%items%>
  
}  

  write clipboard:// build-markup template
]

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You really hate Regular Expressions and discovered the power of Parse with our simple parse tutorials. Nevertheless after a while, you feel frustrated because even after reading the excellent manual, you’re still lacking some real world examples. So here’s an example for using none with Parse.

Let’s say you want to parse this:

content: {



}

or

content: {



}

If you try this rule …

attribute1: [{attribute1="} copy valueattribute1 to {"} thru {"}]
attribute2: [{attribute2="} copy valueattribute2 to {"} thru {"}]

attributes-rule: [attribute1 attribute2 (print valueattribute1 print valueattribute2 )
| attribute2 attribute1(print valueattribute2 print valueattribute1)
]

rule: [any [to {} to {} thru {}] to end]

… the second content won’t fully parse. Instead you have to add none keywords like this:

attribute1: [{attribute1="} copy valueattribute1 to {"} thru {"}]
attribute2: [{attribute2="} copy valueattribute2 to {"} thru {"}]

attributes-rule: [[attribute1 | none] [attribute2 | none] (print valueattribute1 print valueattribute2
valueattribute1: none valueattribute2: none)
| [attribute2 | none] [attribute1 | none] (print valueattribute2 print valueattribute1
valueattribute1: none valueattribute2: none
)
| none
]

rule: [any [to {} to {} thru {}] to end]

If you test content 2 with last rule, you should get

>> parse content rule
valueattribute1
valueattribute2
none
valueattribute21
== true
>>

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If you’re looking for a free rebol ebook and type this on Google, you won’t find any, whereas there is one excellent here, so to boost it on the search engine, I have created this post.

It’s a gentle but rather complete course to Rebol language which will give you a good background to understand other books like the one from Olivier Auverlot and Peter Wood or tutorials on rebol tutorial or elsewhere like the excellent musiclessonz now re-bol.com.

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