B.2 | Motivations#
[1] Background#
rivt is an open source software program that for writing, assembling and reusing engineering calculation documents. Reuse of engineering documents has always been a challenge because engineering documents are complex and apparently commercial software goals do not align with this goal.
Widely used text and image oriented software is generally not sufficient because of the additional complexity of engineering documents. They may include text, images, tables, calculations, active models and computer code. They are also dynamic, and are frequently updated and recalculated by others as project designs evolve and progress.
The desire to reuse engineering documents is a matter of simple efficiency. Most engineering calculations are not unique. They may be organized in different ways with different inputs, but the basic equations and methods are shared across many projects and evolve slowly. The commercial market response has been to develop incompatible, siloed programs with a number of barriers to sharing and reuse that include:
incompatible documents across programs
costly software updates that are backward incompatible
software limited to specific platforms
limited version control
limited report generation
limited collaboration
The table below summarizes and compares limitations between specific programs that rivt is designed to complement or replace.
Software Comparison (commercial programs in italics)
Program |
Reprt [1] |
Ver [2] |
Txt [3] |
Priv [4] |
Unts [5] |
Comp [6] |
C-P [7] |
Coll [8] |
Pub [9] |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Matlab |
no |
no |
no |
no |
no |
no |
no |
no |
yes |
Mathcad |
no |
no |
no |
no |
no |
no |
no |
no |
no |
Mathematica |
no |
no |
no |
no |
no |
no |
no |
no |
yes |
Cloud SaaS |
limited |
no |
no |
no |
no |
no |
yes |
limited |
limited |
Excel |
limited |
no |
no |
no |
no |
yes |
no |
yes |
yes |
Jupyter |
no |
no |
no |
no |
no |
yes |
yes |
yes |
yes |
Quarto |
yes |
yes |
no |
no |
no |
no |
yes |
yes |
yes |
rivt |
yes |
yes |
yes |
yes |
yes |
yes |
yes |
yes |
yes |
[2] Use Cases#
The primary use cases for rivt are:
producing reusable calculation documents that are easier to write, edit and format compared to LaTeX, Excel, Word or other general purpose document software.
producing clear, organized documents that are simple to publish but not necessarily formatted to standards of formal journal articles or books.
producing documents with source files that need to be partitioned into public and private parts prior to sharing as open-source
Specific examples include: internal communication, research documentation, government permits, technical reports, funding applications, teaching, presentations, homework, and front or back ends for calculation software.