Computable Document Format (CDF) is an electronic document format designed to allow easy authoring of dynamically generated interactive content. It was created by Wolfram Research.

Features

Computable document format supports GUI

Gui

Gui or guee is a generic term to refer to grilled dishes in Korean cuisine. These most commonly have meat or fish as their primary ingredient, but may in some cases also comprise grilled vegetables or other vegetarian ingredients. The term derives from the verb, "gupda" in Korean, which literally...

 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 slide-show mode are supported. Styles can be controlled using a cascading style sheet.

Reading

CDF files can be read using a free CDF Player which can be downloaded from Wolfram Research. In contrast to static formats such as PDF and pre-generated interactive content provided by formats such as Adobe Flash

Adobe Flash

Adobe Flash is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast...

 the CDF Player contains an entire runtime library

Runtime library

In computer programming, a runtime library is a special program library used by a compiler, to implement functions built into a programming language, during the execution of a computer program...

 of Mathematica allowing document content to be generated in response to user interaction using any algorithms or visualizations which can be described in Mathematica. This makes it particularly suited to scientific, engineering and other technical content and digital textbooks.

CDF reader support is available for Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

, Macintosh

Macintosh

The Macintosh , or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced by Apple's then-chairman Steve Jobs on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a...

 and Linux

Linux

Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...

 but not for ebooks or tablets. The reader supports a plugin mode for Internet Explorer

Internet Explorer

Windows Internet Explorer is a series of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems, starting in 1995. It was first released as part of the add-on package Plus! for Windows 95 that year...

, Mozilla Firefox

Mozilla Firefox

Mozilla Firefox is a free and open source web browser descended from the Mozilla Application Suite and managed by Mozilla Corporation. , Firefox is the second most widely used browser, with approximately 25% of worldwide usage share of web browsers...

, Google Chrome

Google Chrome

Google Chrome is a web browser developed by Google that uses the WebKit layout engine. It was first released as a beta version for Microsoft Windows on September 2, 2008, and the public stable release was on December 11, 2008. The name is derived from the graphical user interface frame, or...

, Opera and Safari

Safari (web browser)

Safari is a web browser developed by Apple Inc. and included with the Mac OS X and iOS operating systems. First released as a public beta on January 7, 2003 on the company's Mac OS X operating system, it became Apple's default browser beginning with Mac OS X v10.3 "Panther". Safari is also the...

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

Uses

Computable Document Format has been used in electronic books by Pearson Education

Pearson Education

Pearson Education is an international educational publishing and technology company providing textbooks and other educational material, such as multimedia learning tools...

, to provide the content for The Wolfram Demonstrations Project

Wolfram Demonstrations Project

The Wolfram Demonstrations Project is hosted by Wolfram Research, whose stated goal is to bring computational exploration to the widest possible audience. It consists of an organized, open-source collection of small interactive programs called Demonstrations, which are meant to visually and...

, and to add client-side interactivity to Wolfram Alpha

Wolfram Alpha

Wolfram Alpha is an answer-engine developed by Wolfram Research. It is an online service that answers factual queries directly by computing the answer from structured data, rather than providing a list of documents or web pages that might contain the answer as a search engine might...

.

External links

• Wolfram Research CDF
• CDF Player download