== ADF

ADF is a Ruby library for creating and parsing Auto-lead Data Format (ADF)

The ADF format is an industry standard data format for the export and import 
of automotive customer leads using XML.

More information about the ADF format can be found at:

[wikipedia]      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-lead_Data_Format
[dealerapex]     http://adf.dealerapex.com
[specification]  http://adf.dealerapex.com/ADFVersion1.pdf

In our documentation and code, ADF may refer to either this library or the ADF format. 
When it's not clear which we're referring to, we'll use 'ADF format' or 'ADF library' to be clear.

The bug tracker for this project can be found at http://remitaylor.lighthouseapp.com/projects/11762-adf

== Why?

To reduce the overhead of creating and parsing the ADF format so more people can 
enjoy the use of this standard for lead system integration.

== Why Open Source?

Because dealerships and their lead systems are secretive and it's frustrating as hell.

As a developer who wants to let my clients (dealerships) send leads to their lead systems 
via ADF, I've been frustrated by the lack of tools and documentation provided by lead 
systems to help their clients integrate with their lead systems.

Auto lead systems all seem to accept ADF, but none of them that I've found offer any 
validation/creation/parsing or other tools to help working with ADF.  I've even had 
lead systems tell me that they wouldn't share their DTD's because they're proprietary.

Ridiculous.

I hope that open sourcing better tools for working with ADF will help dealerships and lead systems
all work together better and stop acting like industry standard formats are Top Secret!

== License

ADF is released under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL[link:files/COPYING_rdoc.html])

( This means that this code may not be used in any published proprietary software, including websites. 
You may ONLY use this code in GPL-compatible open source applications. 
We hope to release this code under a more permissive license in the future. )