standard-readme/README.md

# Standard Readme

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> Readme Standard Style

This repo is for standardizing how READMEs should look. The goal is to have a spec, a linter, a generator, a badge, and examples. This document is also an example of a standard README.

## Table of Contents

- [Background](#background)
  - [Goals](#goals)
- [Installation](#installation)
- [Usage](#usage)
  - [Generator](#generator)
  - [Badge](#badge)
  - [Example Readmes](#example-readmes)
- [Contribute](#contribute)
- [License](#license)

## Background

Standard Readme started with in the issue originally posed by [@maxogden](https://github.com/maxogden) over at [feross/standard](https://github.com/feross/standard) in [this issue](https://github.com/feross/standard/issues/141). A lot of that discussion ended up in [zcei's standard-readme](https://github.com/zcei/standard-readme/issues/1) repository. While working on maintaining the [IPFS](https://github.com/ipfs) repositories, I needed a way to standardize Readmes. This is a result of that.

> Your documentation is complete when someone can use your module without ever
having to look at its code. This is very important. This makes it possible for
you to separate your module's documented interface from its internal
implementation (guts). This is good because it means that you are free to
change the module's internals as long as the interface remains the same.

> Remember: the documentation, not the code, defines what a module does.

~ [Ken Williams, Perl Hackers](http://mathforum.org/ken/perl_modules.html#document)

### Goals
1. A well defined **specification**. This can be found in the [Spec document](spec.md). It is a constant work in progress; please open issues to discuss changes.
2. **An example README**. This Readme is fully standard-readme compliant, and there are more examples in the `example-readmes` folder.
3. A **linter** that can be used to look at errors in a given Readme. Please refer to the [tracking issue](https://github.com/RichardLitt/standard-readme/issues/5).
4. A **generator** that can be used to quickly scaffold out new READMEs. See [generator-standard-readme](https://github.com/RichardLitt/generator-standard-readme).
5. A **compliant badge** for users. See [the badge](#badge).

## Install

This project uses [node](http://nodejs.org) and [npm](https://npmjs.com). Go check them out if you don't have them locally installed.

```sh
$ npm i -g standard-readme
```

## Usage

Currently, this is only a README spec.

```
$ standard-readme
// Will print spec.md to the console
```

### Generator

To use the generator, look at [generator-standard-readme](https://github.com/RichardLitt/generator-standard-readme).

### Badge

If your README is compliant with Standard-Readme and you're on GitHub, it would be great if you could add the badge. This allows people to link back to this Spec, and helps adoption of the README. The badge is **not required**.

[![standard-readme compliant](https://img.shields.io/badge/standard--readme-OK-green.svg?style=flat-square)](https://github.com/RichardLitt/standard-readme)

To add in Markdown format, use this code:

```
[![standard-readme compliant](https://img.shields.io/badge/standard--readme-OK-green.svg?style=flat-square)](https://github.com/RichardLitt/standard-readme)
```

### Example Readmes

To see how the specification has been applied, see the [example-readmes](example-readmes/).

## Contribute

Feel free to dive in! [Open an issue](https://github.com/RichardLitt/standard-readme/issues/new) or submit PRs.

Standard Readme follows the [Contributor Covenant](http://contributor-covenant.org/version/1/3/0/) Code of Conduct.

## License

MIT (c) Protocol Labs