rivt is an open-source program for writing and assembling calculation documents with a focus on reuse [1]. The large ecosystem of engineering calculation tools often requires organizing their output into a single project document. rivt is designed to write, assemble and link calculation documents and code into a live, editable and organized format prior to publishing to a text, PDF or HTML static format.
The rivt markup language also facilitates conversion of any PDF or text document into a live calculation document that can then be modified or extended. Python knowledge is not required to use rivt but its capabilities are increased when Python scientific and engineering libraries and scripts are used. For further details refer to the rivt user manual.
The primary use case for rivt is producing organized, live calculation documents that can be easily shared, reused and maintained. There are four types of rivt files:
| A rivt file is the basic input file that
rivt file | compiles to a text, PDF or HTML document.
| It is a Python file (.py) that imports the
| rivtlib Python package.
| A rivt doc is the published output of a rivt
rivt doc | file. A doc may be formatted as text, PDF
| or HTML from the same rivt file.
| A rivtbook is a collection of rivt files with
rivtbook | common subject matter and a folder structure
| that makes it easy to select files and resources
| for inclusion in documents and reports.
| A rivt report is the collated output of multiple
| docs into a single text or PDF file or HTML
rivt report | site. Docs are linked and grouped into divisions
| using doc file name conventions.
For an overview of rivt see here. To get started with running examples see install. For rivt and AI see here. Examples of a rivt file with text, PDF, and HTML output docs are provided in this tutorial. Other documents and examples may be downloaded from Google Drive.
The rivtlib Python package formats and compiles a rivt file to a text, PDF or HTML document (doc) in a few seconds. rivt file sections may be interactively executed in an IDE. Multiple rivt files may be compiled into a collated rivt report. rivt files may be organized into rivtbooks. These are rivt file collections around a common subject matter and organized for efficient selection and inclusion in reports. This website is an example of an HTML rivt report. A convenient interface for searching and downloading public rivt files on GitHub is here.
rivt produces organized, formatted engineering documents from active calculation files using reasonable defaults. Use cases are listed here. For static documents with rigid format requirements, including journal articles and books that do not need recalculation, tools like Quarto are likely a better fit. A brief discussion of current engineering document tools and their strengths relative to the objectives of rivt is here.
ver: 1.0.0a12 (Note: rivt is currently alpha sofware. Some features are incomplete and markup tags, commands and assignments may change.)