Stephen on a not so big revolution
p. While doing researches about dynamic documents, I have found a little gem from a "talk":http://www.stephenwolfram.com/publications/talks/ given by "Stephen Wolfram":http://www.stephenwolfram.com/ about "Mathematica":http://www.wolfram.com/products/mathematica/index.html in Chicago at the 1998 Worldwide //Mathematica// Conference:
bq. Version 3 was really big and included our whole new mechanism for dealing with notebook-interactive documents as symbolic expressions. I've seen some very, very nice things that people have done with that idea, and I'm sure I'll see more at the conference. /But it's another one of those big ideas - structure-programmable documents - that I think is going to take a while to really get absorbed./ (...)
Mathematica and Beyond: The Personal Story, Stephen Wolfram, Keynote address at the 1998 Worldwide Mathematica Conference, Chicago.
p. But I think that for such an important concept, the documentation is a bit light ;-):
!http://www.stignergy.net/ideastream/entries/00003/Mathematica_Structure-Programmable_Documents.jpg!
p. Searching a bit more, helped by words from the //Notebook Interface// section of the "//Some New Features of Mathematica 3.0//":http://documents.wolfram.com/v3/MainBook/0.3.1.html section from the "//Mathematica 3 Documentation//":http://documents.wolfram.com/v3/, I have found the document "//Mathematica Integrated Publishing Solution//":http://documents.wolfram.com/products/mathematica/benefits/integrated.html, section //Programmable structured documents//:
bq. Like any other //Mathematica// object, notebooks are //Mathematica// expressions that can be dynamically generated, rewritten, and modified programmatically. Reformatting and even creation of notebooks can be done by a //Mathematica// program. This and other features such as tools for symbolic XML manipulation make //Mathematica// a very flexible and powerful tool for dealing with structured electronic documents. Furthermore, Mathematica notebooks can be exported in a wide variety of formats, including web standards such as XML, XHTML, HTML, and MathML 2.0, as well as TeX and LaTeX for traditional technical publishing.
p. Nothing new in fact. Too early awakened enthusiasm...
Posted by Jean-Philippe on January 26, 2005 994 Comments, 10957 TrackBacks