Computable Document Format


Computable Document Format is an electronic document format designed to allow easy authoring of dynamically generated interactive content. CDF is a published public format created by Wolfram Research.

Features

Computable Document Format supports GUI 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.

Reading

CDF files can be read using a proprietary CDF Player with a restrictive license, which can be downloaded free of charge from Wolfram Research.

Authoring

CDF Files can be created using Mathematica. Online authoring tools are available through the Wolfram Cloud.

Uses

Computable Document Format has been used in electronic books by Pearson Education,, specifically MyMathLab, to provide the content for the Wolfram Demonstrations Project, and to add client-side interactivity to Wolfram Alpha.