Re: Mathematica 8.01 and the CDF plug-in
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg117957] Re: Mathematica 8.01 and the CDF plug-in
- From: John Fultz <jfultz at wolfram.com>
- Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2011 05:11:12 -0400 (EDT)
It requires the full installation of the Wolfram CDF Player, which includes the plugin (unless, of course, you have Mathematica installed, as you do). But the installation procedure on Mac for the Wolfram CDF Player is unlike that of Mathematica. There is one, simple installer which installs everything...both Player and plugin, and you can't split the installations up (the choice would be confusing given that having the plugin is really quite the reason to use the Player in the modern world). So, in a certain sense, your final question doesn't make that much sense for CDF Player users, but I understand why you might ask it given the two-step install for Mathematica on Mac. The icon that you see on the dock is actually the Mathematica/Player front end, running in a separate process in "plugin mode". You can think of the front end in this case running as a sort of a service, using its capabilities to render regions of the web browser window. We gave it a separate icon in this case to distinguish it from any standalone copies which might be running at the same time. Sincerely, John Fultz jfultz at wolfram.com User Interface Group Wolfram Research, Inc. On Tue, 5 Apr 2011 06:43:02 -0400 (EDT), Andrzej Kozlowski wrote: > No, I think it is something to do with the way these things work on Macs. > I am waiting for a Mac user to comment on this, but as I mentioned in my > reply, a similar situation arises in the case of djvu files. I can open > online files using a browser plug-in but not local ones, for which I have > to use a stand alone application. The plug in used to work on local files > in an older version of Mac OS X but no longer. > > With pdf it's even more confusing. Safari can open pdf files directly but > Firefox and other browsers can only download them or have them opened by > a standalone application. > > So CDFs are behaving in the same way as djvus and pdfs. > > Still, what is this "Wolfram" application? Is this the CDF player? It > looks like it is intended to be used as a stand-alone application yet it > can't open CDf files, at least not on my Mac. > > Of course I don't care about this for myself since I have Mathematica. I > am only trying to find out what will happen if I send CDF files to other > users (including Mac users) who do not have it. Will it suffice for them > to install only the plug-in or do they need the stand-alone player. Or > perhaps neither of them work with local files on the Mac? > > Andrzej Kozlowski > > > On 4 Apr 2011, at 18:30, Albert Retey wrote: > >> Hi, >> >>> I thought it was obvious... I tried opening the file with various >>> browsers (at least 4) using the Open File menu and each time >>> something different happened but in no case was it the expected >>> thing. Firefox asked me if I wanted to open the file with some >>> application and suggested one called "Wolfram" (which I assume was >>> the CDF player) but the application would not "load" the file (it >>> reported "loading" and got stuck). Other browsers (Camino) opened >>> the text version of the notebook (or rather CDF file) or seemed to do >>> nothing at all (Safari). >>> >> Interesting. This works alright for me with firefox and google chrome on >> a windows box. To me it looks like the plugin has not been installed or >> setup correctly (it needs to tell the browser for which files it feels >> responsible, and that seems to not really work). You could try to >> reinstall in the officially recommended way. It probably hasn't to do >> anything with possible limitations of the plugin or player at all... >> >> You could try to reinstall mathematica or the player with the >> recommended official setup program or learn how to manually set these >> relations for OS X and/or the browsers you use. On the other hand, I >> think the fact that the browser plugin doesn't open local files >> correctly is probably not your main concern :-) >> >> albert >> >> -- >> Albert Retey >> >> Hauptstrasse 16a/1 >> A-6074 Rinn >> mailto: albert.retey at gmx.at >> phone: +43 650 700 3142