Re: How to write a "proper" math document
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg120160] Re: How to write a "proper" math document
- From: Richard Fateman <fateman at cs.berkeley.edu>
- Date: Sun, 10 Jul 2011 05:02:35 -0400 (EDT)
- References: <201107080854.EAA28729@smc.vnet.net> <iv9eu9$dg4$1@smc.vnet.net>
On 7/9/2011 4:44 AM, Murray Eisenberg wrote: > David pointed out that if you want interactive content in a .cdf, you > have to do so by means of Manipulate. But there are situations where > Manipulate is much too restrictive and you want other Dynamic content, > including DynamicModule. > > Also, to promote the .cdf format and CDF Player and plug-in, surely a > more attention-getting name than "CDF" or "Computable Document Format" > is desirable? Yes, "CDF" has a nice analogy to "PDF", but so what. (And > just wait for Adobe to catch on and sue over the use of "DF"!) I think that there is very little likelihood of the world standardizing on CDF for digital distribution of mathematical documents. There IS a standard, and it is different. The www has evolved document representation to include math, and MathML is how. Numerous programs, including Mathematica, can use MathML. Is this a good standard? Eh, probably not the simplest way of representing a Mathematica notebook. However, one can, via "save-as", save a Mathematica notebook as XML+MathML. There is another standard, "OpenMath" which is more ambitious. I have been critical of both of these, in part because they are incredibly verbose. But no one has to look at the internals. One possibility is that by means of a click a browser displaying MathML might stuff the MathML into a computer algebra system. This is the kind of thing I was hoping the NIST would consider in its digital library. I see no reason that Mathematica cannot be linked to MathML in a web document, if the browser is running in a Mathematica-ready computer system. If it is not already programmed as the inverse of "save-as" XML, I imagine it would take only a few lines of code (probably in jscript) to suck up (suitable) XML documents into Mathematica. Actually, I glanced at the output XML, from Mathematica and it is not really suitable as Mathematica input, (in version 7 anyway). But it could be made to work, in my opinion. It might even make documents that could be read on telephones. RJF > > On 7/8/11 4:54 AM, John Fultz wrote: >> David, >> >> I wanted to respond to one particular point you made in your recent post: >> >> On Thu, 7 Jul 2011 07:28:02 -0400 (EDT), David Park wrote: >>> One path is to produce a free easily obtainable Mathematica Reader on the >>> model of the Adobe Acrobat Reader. The reader could read the document, >>> operate the controls (with maybe some minor restrictions) but not much >>> else. The idea is that once users could publish in Mathematica they would >>> write more literate documents. More people would see them and decide they >>> really wanted to do the same (or use the generated knowledge) and so >>> would buy regular Mathematica themselves. I despair that WRI will ever >>> make this approach work. (A free Mathematica PlayerPro would be close but >>> they don't want to do that.) WRI puts too many restrictions and caveats >>> in their approaches such that it will never convince people that it will >>> be a general method of publication. For example, it looks as if all >>> dynamics must be via the Manipulate statement and one cannot write custom >>> dynamics. I was once hopeful, but now have doubts that this approach will >>> ever work. >> >> You've made this criticism before, and the criticism was much more valid then >> than now. It's not clear to me from what you wrote above whether you know or >> appreciate how much things have changed. One of your previous criticisms has >> long been that Mathematica could not simply create and maintain a native >> document which would be readable and executable by Player. I.e., because Player >> could "play" .nb files, and Mathematica could not create .nbp files (without >> submission to a website, and all that this entails). My understanding is that >> this a large part of why you believed Player Pro to be the superior >> solution...because Player Pro can play .nb files. >> >> But, in version 8, the situation has changed significantly. Mathematica can now >> directly create and maintain CDF (or sometimes called "FreeCDF") files. Player >> can play CDF files. CDF, as they might say, is the new NBP. There remain, of >> course, some restrictions as to what can be accomplished in the Player. The >> broadest category of items is that CDF files created directly by Mathematica >> cannot store new content to disk. They can't use Export[], save files, etc. (*) >> But they do support much of what you've suggested before, and much more than >> Mathematica 7 did. >> >> That you may not be aware of this isn't your fault. Wolfram hasn't said much >> about it yet because we've been in the process of making sure that we can launch >> the right message about CDF in a strong way. There will be a lot more to be >> said about CDF soon...I expect that before long plenty will be said on the >> Wolfram website and elsewhere describing it in much more detail. But the >> functionality is already there, in version 8, and I encourage you to play with >> it. >> >> Sincerely, >> >> John Fultz >> jfultz at wolfram.com >> User Interface Group >> Wolfram Research, Inc. >> >> >> (*) It is possible, incidentally, to create CDF files with the capacity to, >> while running in Player, create content using Export[], saving, etc. But that >> functionality can't be unlocked directly from within Mathematica, and more will >> be said about that later, as well. >> >> >> >
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