Re: Player Pro Usage
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg91378] Re: Player Pro Usage
- From: David Bailey <dave at Remove_Thisdbailey.co.uk>
- Date: Tue, 19 Aug 2008 07:14:39 -0400 (EDT)
- References: <g88v2k$grk$1@smc.vnet.net>
Donald DuBois wrote: > Does anyone have experience using PlayerPro > for distributing Mathematica Package applications? > I am especially interested in the following issues: > > (1) Does encryption work well to keep the source > code confidential - from being viewed by the user > of the application? > > (2) Are there any limitations to the functionality > of packages that can be used with PlayPro? Specifically, > do front end dynamic capabilities like Manipulate sliders, Input Fields etc. work with PlayPro? > > Thank you. > > Don > I too have a client using PlayerPro. I am confident that this technology will enable a whole range of applications where the client does not need to purchase Mathematica. Note however, that to the best of my knowledge, PlayerPro does does not add anything new in terms of encryption - you are free to encrypt your code for use with Mathematica, but with PlayerPro packages must be encrypted to prevent PlayerPro being used in an open-ended way as if it were Mathematica. This restriction, together with the restriction on modifying the contents of notebooks, does however prevent an end-user exploring your code by entering his own commands, as he could with Mathematica. I do have reservations about relying on the encryption provided by Encode, at least without the use of an explicit key (the third argument). I have discovered that if you Encode two versions of a file with just one byte difference, you only find two bytes differ in the encoded files. This suggests to me that the encryption is weak - presumably because at the time the algorithm was defined, there were restrictions on incorporating strong encryption in software for export. Even with an explicit key, the encoded files are not completely different (try the same experiment with, say PGP, for comparison). David Bailey http://www.dbaileyconsultancy.co.uk