Computable Document Format (CDF) is an electronic document format designed to allow authoring dynamically generated, interactive content. CDF was created by

Wolfram Research Wolfram Research, Inc. ( ) is an American multinational company that creates computational technology. Wolfram's flagship product is the technical computing program Wolfram Mathematica, first released on June 23, 1988. Other products include ...

, and CDF files can be created using Mathematica. As of 2021, the Wolfram Research website lists CDF as a "legacy" format.

Features

Computable Document Format supports

GUI The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, inste ...

elements such as sliders, menus, and buttons. Content is updated using embedded computation in response to GUI interaction. Contents can include formatted text, tables, images, sounds, and animations. CDF supports Mathematica typesetting and technical notation. Paginated layout, structured drill down layout, and slideshow mode are supported. Styles can be controlled using a

cascading style sheet Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation of a document written in a markup language such as HTML or XML (including XML dialects such as SVG, MathML or XHTML). CSS is a cornerstone technol ...

Reading

CDF files can be read using a proprietary CDF Player, downloadable from the Wolfram Research website but with a restricted license. In contrast to static formats such as PDF, the CDF Player contains an entire

runtime library In computer programming, a runtime library is a set of low-level routines used by a compiler to invoke some of the behaviors of a runtime environment, by inserting calls to the runtime library into compiled executable binary. The runtime enviro ...

of Mathematica allowing document content to be generated in response to user interactionWolfram punts expanded medium for technical docs
ThinQ and digital textbooks. CDF reader support is available for Microsoft Windows,

Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and software en ...

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...

and

iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also include ...

but not for e-book readers or Android tablets. The reader supports a plugin mode for

Internet Explorer Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft which was used in the Windows line of operating systems ( ...

, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome,

Opera Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a libr ...

and Safari, which allows CDF content to be embedded inline in HTML pages.

Uses

Computable Document Format has been used in electronic books by Pearson Education, specifically MyMathLab, to provide the content for the

Wolfram Demonstrations Project The Wolfram Demonstrations Project is an organized, open-source collection of small (or medium-size) interactive programs called Demonstrations, which are meant to visually and interactively represent ideas from a range of fields. It is hos ...

, and to add client-side interactivity to

Wolfram Alpha WolframAlpha ( ) is an answer engine developed by Wolfram Research. It answers factual queries by computing answers from externally sourced data. WolframAlpha was released on May 18, 2009 and is based on Wolfram's earlier product Wolfram Mat ...

.Wolfram Launches its own interactive document format
PC Pro, July 2011

References

{{Wolfram Research Computer-related introductions in 2011 Wolfram Research Electronic documents Open formats Page description languages Vector graphics Computer file formats Digital press

Features

Reading

Uses

See also

References