NOTE: An update to the Axure SpecGen Tool has been released.  You can download and find out more information at http://www.axure.com/axurespecgentool.aspx.

Hello everyone!  My name is Nick Hunt and I have been developing a specification generation tool called SpecGen using the Axure RP API.  The SpecGen Tool is free, much faster than the built in specification generator, and will serve as an open source example of how to use the API to generate specification documents.

The SpecGen Tool improves on the specification generation built into Axure RP by incorporating new technologies and features. This “preview” release of the SpecGen tool features the following benefits:

• Much improved speed (often 10 to 20 times faster)
• Formatting option to generate multiple annotation tables
• Simpler, more powerful formatting of the specification by managing a single input document
• The ability to generate Microsoft Word specifications on a computer without Microsoft Word installed

More features are planned and the source code will be released in the coming weeks.

The installer for the preview release of the SpecGen Tool can be downloaded here. 

SpecGen requires and will automatically install the Microsoft .NET 3.0 Framework if it is not installed.

Also, Word 2007 or Word 2000/XP/2003 with the Office 2007 Compatibility Pack (free) is required to edit and view the new .docx file format that SpecGen generates. If you are not using Word 2007 and do not have the Compatibility Pack installed, the Compatibility Pack will be installed with the SpecGen Tool.

Axure RP does not need to be installed on the computer in order to use SpecGen.

Note: If you are distributing the specification to others, you may want to open it in Word and save the generated .docx file as a .doc file for those who do not have Word 2007 or the Compatibility Pack installed.

Using the SpecGen Tool

Getting Started
After installing, run SpecGen
Click “New spec config file“
Select an Axure RP file for spec generation.
Click “Generate”.

Configuring the specification
Most of the configurations in the SpecGen Tool are similar to the built in specification generator.

One noticeable difference is the way the specification’s formatting is configured.

To configure the styles, add content to the document, or add headers and footers:

• Create a new .docx document. A good place to start is to create a copy of the default .docx file by clicking the “here” hyperlink in the Word Template section.
• Edit the Word document as needed.
• Place the string “[[INSERT AXURE SPEC]]” within the document where the specification will be inserted.
• In the Word Template section, enter the location of the document and the names of the styles to use in the specification.

New to the SpecGen Tool, you can configure the style of the annotation tables by modifying the Word style.  This gives you the ability to configure properties like the alternating row colors that have been added to the default table style.

Another new feature is that the table containing the annotation information can be separated into multiple tables. This is configured in the Annotations section of the SpecGen Tool.

Table of Contents
In this release, the table of contents in the generated specification is not automatically updated.  To update the table of contents, select the table of contents in Word and either right click and select the “Update Field” option or press F9.

About the Technology used in the SpecGen Tool

The SpecGen Tool incorporates several new technologies, including OpenXML, .NET 3.0, WPF, and more.

OpenXML
The SpecGen Tool takes advantage of the new Office OpenXML format by generating the XML that makes up a document directly (as opposed to using Office automation to create documents).  The primary benefit of moving to this format is increased performance; generating the XML that internally represents these documents is much faster than interfacing with Word to create them.  Microsoft has updated previous versions of Office so that compatibility should not be an issue.  As an added bonus, OpenXML (.docx) files are generally smaller than their .doc counterparts.

Using the Axure API
 This project is an example of what can be created using the Axure RP API.  We plan to release the SpecGen Tool source code, which will hopefully provide developers with a good starting point for developing custom specification generators or other applications with the API.

.NET 3.0 and WPF
In addition, the SpecGen tool takes advantage of .NET 3.0 Framework.  The interface is developed using Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF).  So far, the new framework has provided faster development of more dynamic user interfaces.

Conclusion
In future iterations of the SpecGen tool, we hope to introduce features for more customization of specification documents. In the meantime, we hope you will try out this preview release. We appreciate any feedback, suggestions, or bug reports. Please send them to support@axure.com or discuss them on our Axure RP forum at http://www.axure.com/cs/forums.

Here is the link to the SpecGen download again: Axure SpecGen Tool