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Re: Mathematica notebooks the best method for technical

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg87179] Re: Mathematica notebooks the best method for technical
  • From: Mariano Suárez-Alvarez <mariano.suarezalvarez at gmail.com>
  • Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2008 05:15:59 -0500 (EST)
  • References: <fsd6lf$9fn$1@smc.vnet.net> <fsg6t7$jdd$1@smc.vnet.net>

On Apr 2, 4:58 am, Karen Bindash <KarenBind... at googlemail.com> wrote:
> On 1 Apr, 09:20, Mariano Su=E1rez-Alvarez
>
> <mariano.suarezalva... at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Indeed. I would not be able to describe such an effort
> > with any other term apart from misguided.
>
> Very misguided.
>
> > Essentially
> > proprietary formats cannot possibly be considered as a
> > candidate for generalscientificcommunication. From
> > the simple fact that Mathematica, say, is absurdly expensive
> > for most of the world, to rather more complicated issues
> > (for example, one can never tell when the whimsical ires
> > of whatever be the superpower of the day, any day, may decide
> > to forbid selling, say, Mathematica to country X in order
> > to `fight Y' for whatever value X has at the time---terrorists,
> > peadophiles, and so on.), to so many other issues...
>
> > It simply cannot withstand any analysis.
>
> > -- m
>
> The only way I could see this happening is if Wolfram Research
> released the front end under the GPL or similar. Then it might, but
> even then it is far from clear it would and I personally doubt it
> would.

Since the semantics of .nb files are handled by the kernel,
mostly, having the front end be even public domain does not
solve anything. Indeed, assuming one can render any notebook
just with front-end functionality, having a free-as-in-freedom
frontend but not a free-as-in-freedom kernel does not leave you
in any better position than having a PDF reader, which you
already have.

-- m


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