**RUntime Formatting Function**

(acronym expansion subject to change)

[APN] 2009-02-18 Ruff! 0.1 has been released. See [http://woof.magicsplat.com/ruff_guide].

Ruff! is the documentation generator included with [Woof!] but can be used to document any Tcl programs (8.4+). Unlike other source documentation systems, Ruff! generates documentation using runtime introspection.

   * See [http://woof.magicsplat.com/ruff_guide/motivation] for benefits and motivation for Ruff!
   * The Ruff! man pages at [http://woof.magicsplat.com/manuals/ruff/index.html] are an example of output generated by Ruff! via NaturalDocs.
   * The sample Ruff! documentation for [TclOO] classes is at [http://woof.magicsplat.com/manuals/ruff_sample/index.html].
   * The Ruff! (blog) user guide is at [http://woof.magicsplat.com/ruff_guide].

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[AMG]: Looks very exciting!  I can't wait to see the code for this.  I'll be happy to start using it in my projects.

Many years ago I had thought of writing a documentation generator, but it had not occurred to me that I could harness [Tcl]'s vast [introspection] capabilities.  As a result, it would have been extremely limited, doing nothing more than extracting specially-formatted comments (while ignoring the actual code) and dumping them to [HTML] or similar.  It would have allowed me to interleave code and documentation, but it would also have required that the documentation effectively duplicate the code.

Side note: On this Wiki, be careful with words underlined with ==='s, when the words are three or six characters long.  The underlines may be interpreted to start or stop a block of preformatted text!

'''RU'''ntime '''F'''act '''F'''inder?

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I think that RS's [docstring] is noteworthy here, it's a concise demonstration of the mentioned introspection capabilities to document Tcl source. '''-- Effe'''
[APN] Hmmm... that's only ten lines. I better go figure what the other 2490 lines of my code are doing!
'''Effe:''' I don't want to criticize your work! I just wanted to point to the core concept of introspection to gather the needed information, it's a mind-sized bite to understand a tiny part of your program (and a tiny part of Tcl). I learned myself much about Tcl's capabilities by following link after link on this wiki and this is one of those links, tightly coupled to the topic. The honor of giving us a much more elaborated work that goes far beyond docstring is nevertheless due to you. [APN] '''Effe''' I really didn't take your reference as criticism at all! Honest! My remark was purely in jest, not intended as sarcasm. As you say, the Wiki offers a lot, and if you see any of my open source code, you'll see lots attributed to various Wiki pages in the comments.

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!!!!!!
%| [Category Documentation] |%
!!!!!!