A.2 Motivations#

[1t] Background#

rivt is an open source software project that simplifies sharing and reuse of engineering documents. This has always been a challenge because the inclusion of text, images, tables, calculations, models and computer code required in enginering reports has led to deevlopment of incompatible, mutually exclusive software. Sharing and reuse has been restricted by design and terms of use of existing software. This includes:

  • incompatible documents from different programs

  • frequent software updates needed to maintain document access

  • high update costs

  • software limited to specific platforms

  • limited document version control

  • limited report generation features

  • limited collaboration features

rivt is designed to address these limitations and function as a complement or replacement to existing software. The table below summarizes and compares limitations between different software programs.

Software Comparison

Program

Rep [1]

Ver [2]

Txt [3]

Comp [4]

CP [5]

Collab [6]

Matlab

no

no

no

no

no

no

Mathcad

no

no

no

no

no

no

Mathematica

no

no

no

no

no

no

Cloud SaaS

limited

no

no

no

yes

limited

Excel

limited

no

no

yes

no

yes

Jupyter

no

no

no

yes

yes

yes

rivt

yes

yes

yes

yes

yes

yes

[2t] Use Cases#

The primary use case for rivt is producing engineering documents that lie between back of envelope calculations and sketches, and formal journal publications. In other words, it produces clear, formatted, organized documents that are easy to write and edit.

The second use case is when flexibilty is needed to produce documents in a variety of formats including text, PDF or HTML.

A third use case is when documents need to interact with other software programs.

rivt files can function as a front and back end for:

  1. software control

  2. visualization

  3. instrumentation

rivt docs can be used for:

  1. internal communication

  2. research documentation

  3. government permits

  4. technical reports

  5. funding applications

Because rivt is compatible with collaborative tools it may be used for:

  1. teaching

  2. presentations

  3. real time collaboration