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Re: Wolfram|Alpha Lookup Tool for Mathematica
On May 20, 11:59 pm, mark mcclure <mcmcc... at unca.edu> wrote:
> On May 20, 4:58 am, "gigabitbuc... at BrockEng.com"
>
> <gigabitbuc... at BrockEng.com> wrote:
> > 1.) Presumably, at some point under some conditions, the (XML?) output
> > of Wolfram|Alpha will be made available to Import[]. Does anyone have
> > any comment, rumor, or progress to report?
>
> I think that Wolfram|Alpha will definitely be linked tightly into Mathematica.
> I've watched a few of Stephen Wolfram's video introductions and he makes
> it clear that Mathematica will likely be the largest user of the
> forthcoming API.
>
> Mark McClure
This is as good a thread as any to summarize what an outsider can know
(here on May 22nd) about the future implementations of the W|A /
Mathematica connection.
If we naively ask for:
In[5]:= Import["http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=pi","Elements";]
we get a familiar and promising result.
Out[5]=
{Data,FullData,Hyperlinks,Images,ImageURLs,Plaintext,Source,Title,XMLObject}
Asking for
In[6]:= Import["http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=pi","FullData";]
we get an almost fully masked, but still promising, result:
Out[6]= {{{}},{{{},{},{}}},{=A9 2009 Wolfram Alpha LLC \[LongDash] A
Wolfram Research Company,Terms of Use,Privacy Policy,Participate},{{}},
{},{},{},{},{},{},{}}
No big surprises there, considering the way the dialog is structured
at launch.
What does encourage speculation though is
http : // www41.wolframalpha.com/developers.html
which invites prospective developers (presumably Mathematica licensees
but maybe not) to apply for an API ID number:
http://www41.wolframalpha.com/apiapplication.html
Reading
WolframAlphaAPI.pdf
suggests that W|A page data might be accessed using the developer's ID
in a form like:
http://api.wolframalpha.com/v1/query?input=pi&appid=xxxxx
Attempting to Import[] from this page won't get a return nowof course,
but the return forms described in the API documentation resemble those
accessible to Import[], even though I couldn't find any mention of
Import[] or any use of Mathematica at all.
The API documentation discourages the idea of trying writing general
purpose parsers for the data, but what the heck? Most of what I would
be interested in doing would be ad hoc, just as we do for any unmasked
web pages now.
This is about all I can come up with and speculate about. I think we
just have to wait for this to evolve.
All this makes so much sense to me that I hope it comes to pass.
Cheers,
Fred Klingener
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