Wolfram Launches PDF Killer
New digital format makes static documents interactive. By Kathy Ishizuka July 21, 2011A new digital format promises to upend the traditional PDF, bringing live interactivity to static documents.
Created by Wolfram Research, makers of the Wolfram Alpha computational search engine, the Computable Document Format (CDF) enables users to interact with online documents, input their own data, and generate results, live.
Traditional PDF (portable document format) documents "are flat, lifeless, and inactive," says Conrad Wolfram, Director of Strategic Development at Wolfram. "Even in the online format, they've taken paper-based communications and stuck them online. They haven't conceptualized what they can do."
The new CDF standard released July 21 presents a "new active knowledge container" that's as everyday as a document, but as interactive as an app, Wolfram said at a July 7 press briefing.
So imagine an illustration of atoms in a textbook. In CDF format, the atoms would be seen moving. A student could then, in an experiment, alter certain elements by inputting data and the atoms would react, bouncing madly within the document box, as was demonstrated in the briefing.
Or take a static document like a pension statement. A CDF version would allow you to test assumptions based on varying investment schemes, and you would be able to see different returns, as you input information of your choosing.
Infographics, those illustrative representations of complex information, are popular, but rather "dead," according to Wolfram. "They are fixed. Now you can input your own information for live computation. Imagine a growing news story on earthquakes," he says, with live graphics that change with seismic conditions.
Make your own "knowledge apps"
A key aspect of CDF is the capacity to make your own. More than 7,000 "knowledge apps" have already been created by researchers, educators, and students using an early version of CDF. Available on the Wolfram Demonstrations Project, the apps include "Blood Spatter Trigonometry," live knitting charts, Galileo's Experiment at the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and "Refrigerator poetry."
They're refining the authoring capability to make the process of creating an app as easy as drawing up an Excel spreadsheet, says Wolfram.
CDFs can currently be authored using Mathematica 8 and distributed for free using the Wolfram CDF Player.
Transforming textbooks
A beta form of CDF can be seen in an e-textbook currently on the market: Briggs/Cochran Calculus, published by Pearson. Wolfram reports great interest in the technology from a number of publishers and is working with Cengage and Wiley, among other companies.
At present, you need to download a browser to view CDF content, but eventually the technology will be Web-based, says Wolfram. Content producers and other companies can buy the package to run the program on their own server.
