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Re: Mathematica 8.01 and the CDF plug-in

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  • Subject: [mg117973] Re: Mathematica 8.01 and the CDF plug-in
  • From: George Woodrow III <georgevw3 at mac.com>
  • Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2011 05:14:12 -0400 (EDT)

I'm not sure if what I am doing is replicating what you are attempting, but I have a Mac running OS X 10.6.7.

In the finder, the .cdf files are by default set to open with Text Edit, which is OS X's standard way of dealing with unknown filetypes that appear to be text. I changed the "open with..." to Mathematica, and the file now opens with mathematica 8.0.1. Curiously, the file icon remains as a generic document icon. Perhaps Mathematica does not have icons for file types with the .cdf icon.  The .nbp icon has the distinctive new swirly logo.

Using the File menu in Safari, I can attempt to open both .cdf and .nbp files. The .cdf files are 'dimmed out', meaning that Safari can't open them. The .nb and .nbp files all appear to be legal, but they do not load into Safari. What happens is that a Finder window opens for the folder that contains the file.

I have the latest Safari Mathematica plug-in installed, and it works well opening notebook files (.nb, .nbp, and .cdf) from the web.

As far as I know, the plug-in is only available if you install Mathematica or the new Player. There is a separate step in the installation process to instal the plug-in. I have not tested whether FireFox or Chrome use this plug-in, since I rarely use these browsers.

It never occurred to me to try to open local files in Safari. Safari can only show the content with the plug-in, and the only way to get the plug-in is to have the player or full Mathematica installed.

I am concerned that the .cdf files' default action is not set to open in Mathematica, and that the icon is generic. I should probably file a bug report.

george





On Apr 5, 2011, at 6:43 AM, 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
> 



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