
Computable Document Format - franze
http://www.wolfram.com/cdf/
======
vannevar
This is a recurring problem with Wolfram: he honestly doesn't seem to be aware
of what is going on in the world at large. When he came out with 'A New Kind
of Science', everyone in academia was aghast that he had spent 10 years of his
life reproducing research that was readily available in existing academic
papers (not that NKOS wasn't a great book, but it was hardly new science). Now
he's pushing a technology that indeed looks as if it belongs in 1999, as
though he's completely oblivious to the ongoing evolution of HTML5 and
Javascript.

~~~
taliesinb
Let me disabuse you of that notion: Stephen is more aware of what is going on
the wider world than anyone else I know or have ever met. Like him or hate
him, he's a true polymath. Our meetings will often wander off to the topic of
famous Silicon Valley implosions, or Feynman stories, or the tales from the
Institute of Advanced Studies, or the future of augmented reality.

So, with some knowledge of the man, I can say honestly that the charge that
he's oblivious of the evolution of HTML is completely laughable. A random
illustration: Wolfram Research was one of the first companies to go online in
the early 90s (as it happens, Tim Berners-Lee is a long-time Mathematica
user). An amusing story: it was also one of the only companies to survive the
original Morris worm unscathed, owing to deliberate use of obscure Japanese
computers for WRI's gateway.

While I can't talk about unannounced technologies, I can say that HTML5 plays
a pretty crucial role in our future technologies. In fact, CDF will eventually
have a server-side incarnation that relies on HTML5 for client-side
interactivity.

~~~
sbierwagen
Taliesinb, you really should be disclosing the fact that you work for Wolfram
Alpha, in this comment thread. It is not at all obvious from glancing at your
profile.

~~~
jmatt
I thought his comment implied it. In addition his profile has his website
which makes it quite clear he works for Wolfram (about and github):
<http://taliesinb.net/>

If someone posts a link in their profile and you don't follow it, they can't
be held accountable.

------
karol
There is something like this for HTML + CSS. It's called tangle.js and was
created by Bret Victor: <http://worrydream.com/Tangle/>

~~~
romaniv
Very interesting. I really like the concept of draggable digits. They are more
compact than sliders, easier to make changes to and give better feedback. Now
I wish this was a standard UI element / HTML input type.

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Joakal
It's not quite free: [http://www.wolfram.com/cdf/adopting-cdf/licensing-
options.ht...](http://www.wolfram.com/cdf/adopting-cdf/licensing-options.html)

At least it's an open format apparently:
<http://www.wolfram.com/cdf/faq/#aboutcdf>

~~~
perlgeek
And they don't state if they hold any patents that covers CDF.

~~~
extension
I would imagine any company with a decent size patent portfolio has one that
covers this.

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jjm
I'm really not for anything that can't readily be done in HTML5+CSS3+JS atm.
Especially If i need to make people _download_ a 'player'. What is this, 1999
all over again (some might say yes ha).

I can see big corp. getting excited over this just like 99% of the crap they
buy and don't use.

That said, this doesn't exactly move forward with global progress on the
problem or solution (as well it shouldn't wolfram is a corp after all... in
the business to make money).

~~~
john_b
I don't think the average person on HN is the target audience for this in the
first place. If you know HTML5 and Javascript and work in a web-based
environment most of the time, then this probably won't help you much.

On the other hand, if you are, like me, one of the many people in academia who
would love to have a way to embed interactive graphs and tables into your
papers to make them more understandable for the reader, then this is
potentially very useful. Especially since very few people in academia (outside
CS departments anyway) know or have any interest in learning HTML5, and many
already use or have easy access to Mathematica to begin with.

Also, Wolfram being a corporation is irrelevant. Some problems are best solved
by large corporations trying to make money. That may or may not be the case
here, but they definitely have an incentive to keep the format open (in some
sense) and promulgate the free CDN reader (much like Adobe has done in the
past).

~~~
taliesinb
That's exactly right. If I could elaborate a bit:

For sure, web developers and programmers can do most of what CDF can do, on
their own, in HTML5. It might take them a _lot_ longer, but they could
certainly end up with a nice finished product.

This doesn't solve the problem. The problem is neatly illustrated by the fact
that news organizations, which have a huge incentive to make compelling,
sticky interactivity that wraps their news properties, haven't gone for it.
I've only seen two non-trivial uses, the NYT and BBC News, and its clear these
were bespoke jobs that cost them a lot of money.

The same goes for textbook publishers, scientists, NGOs, etc, anywhere were
technical communication could be significantly improved with interactive
documents. This problem _remains unsolved_.

CDF aims to make it possible for someone to crank out an interactive figure or
document in a matter of hours, not weeks, with very little code.

A side comment: I say this without any real proof, but WRI specializes in
doing _interesting_ things that are economically self-sustaining, rather than
things that make a lot of money. Mathematica is far from a cash cow, and WRI
is a small company (~500 people), but it has lasted 25 years, and it regularly
adds cutting edge technology to its portfolio. Obviously, it gets to balance
profit with "interestingness" mainly because it is privately owned, and
Stephen likes collecting interesting people and interesting projects for them
to do.

~~~
msollami
Wow, taliesinb is making a lot more sense than you guys.

------
ChuckMcM
Meta comment, when I read it I thought 'you've invented a spreadsheet
interchange format?'

Having looked at the technology in depth I can appreciate the notion of
building into the document the computation that went into it. This could be a
killer way to distribute component data sheets where all the graphs were
'live'.

That being said, it scares the crap out of me. Why? Because I've got Frame
documents which are unusable (there is no available version of Frame which
will read them, and no legal way to obtain said version) This is a
particularly insidious form of bit rot. I save PDF documents on CD with a self
contained C language implementation of a PDF reader that can read them and a
set of fonts that work that reader.

Without the equivalent for CDF I worry about having critical information (or
simply relevant information) that cannot be viewed or used. At least with PDF
if you print it out the paper version is still usable. Not so if you don't
have an open source version of Mathematica to interpret what you read.

------
javanix
I'm not sure I'm entirely thrilled about a new document format that requires a
106mb download to view.

~~~
antimora
231MB for Linux. This is 7 times larger than my browser.

------
josephkern
This is very similar to org-mode with babel and latex output.
<http://orgmode.org/worg/org-contrib/babel/intro.html>

~~~
WWWWH
Absolutely, although I guess that the advantage of this is if you want to play
with someone else's analysis you don't have to install the same analysis
software.

I guess I'll be sticking with org mode though and trying Tangle
(<http://worrydream.com/Tangle/>) as suggested elsewhere on this page.

------
exit
what does this do that couldn't be done with html5?

~~~
tomelders
My first thought exactly. HTML is the document format of the future. It seems
almost everything can read HTML these days. Here we have an excellent, feature
packed, well tested, well documented format that appears to offer everything
CDF offers and more. All we need now are applications geared towards
delivering the right tools to perform the necessary task.

One of my side projects is a HTML word processor, and every time I look at a
common Word processor feature, HTML offers a ton of free and easy to implement
ways to make that feature better.

~~~
taliesinb
Well, here's something that HTML5 can't do (at least easily).

Dynamic @ Graphics @ Point @ ImageKeypoints @ CurrentImage[]

What does this do? It takes a video stream from your webcam, extracts SURF
keypoints ("salient" parts of the image, like corners), and plots them live.
Note that all those functions are online at reference.wolfram.com.

THAT'S A CDF! You have access to some heavy duty algorithms covering a vast
number of fields. In fact its kind of surprising it _fits_ in a few hundred
megs. You're essentially getting the whole of Mathematica, for free.

~~~
derleth
And how many of those CDF files will still be readable in ten years?

~~~
taliesinb
So Wolfram Research has been around for 25 years, which is geological time for
a software company. It has a (several) niches, and its technology is so far
ahead of its competitors that I think the answer to your question is: all of
them.

~~~
derleth
I don't believe you.

If this doesn't take off, Wolfram dumps the project, removes the software from
its website and other channels, and the documents are worthless.

If I invest in this, I'm betting Wolfram is going to boil the ocean or is
going to be cost-insensitive regarding how much it takes to keep this
available. Neither of those sound like good bets.

------
antimora
Here is the comparison with other formats (PDF, JS, Flash, etc).

There are many marketing lies in it! For one, it claims that PDF is not
embedded in the browser and CDF is yes? "Full page within a browser" is yes
but not for JS? "Dynamically interactive charts and diagrams" is partially
supported??

Could anyone please explain to me what I am missing here?

<http://www.wolfram.com/cdf/compare-cdf/how-cdf-compares.html>

------
josscrowcroft
Fantastic idea, horrendous implementation, unfortunately. It needs over half a
gigabyte of drive space to install the reader, which pretty much kills this
for widespread adoption. Great tech insights, though!

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techas
I guess they are trying to go on this direction:
<http://www.executablepapers.com/>

------
tommi
Reminds me of PDF.

