PDF

Wolfram today rolled out its Computable Document Format, which is designed to turn documents into interactive applications.

The goal is to turn "lifeless documents" into ones that bring data to life, show the data behind assumptions and illustrate concepts. Conrad Wolfram, strategic director of Wolfram, said the CDF effort has now reached the point where the company can open it up to developers, publishers, and other interested parties.

Wolfram is still working out the business model behind CDF, but publishers have reportedly shown "great interest." For now, CDF is delivered via a free player that can bring infographics, journals, and math lessons to life. It's not a stretch to see how a magazine like Popular Science could publish in the CDF format.

The rub is that Wolfram needs adoption and there's already a dominant document format in Adobe's PDF. One big challenge would be figuring out the interplay between CDF and PDF. Would someone want to embed a CDF document into a PDF? Conrad Wolfram said that "the CDF format will be open" with the goal of becoming a public standard.

For now, Wolfram needs developers on board. CDF has reached the point where a developer with the know-how to author an XML document can bring publications to life. Indeed, the use cases for CDF revolve around journal articles, knowledge apps, textbooks, infographics, and presentations and reports.

This story originally appeared on ZDNet's Between the Lines.… Read more

It's a cliche to say it, but sometimes less really is more. That's definitely the case with Sumatra PDF Viewer. This lightweight program lets you view PDFs without a lot of extra features that slow things down. It has all the basics you need and none of the fluff that you don't. If you're frustrated by the clunkiness of some of the big-name PDF viewers, this could be exactly what you've been looking for.

The program has a plain, intuitive interface, with a few menus and a toolbar across the top. The basic PDF viewer … Read more

PDFs can be extremely useful, but they're also hard to work with if you don't have the right tools. Putting the contents of two different PDFs into one file isn't just a matter of cutting and pasting, and neither is the process of splitting a PDF into two different documents. PDF Split Or Merge is an easy-to-use program that can take care of both these tasks. It's not perfect, but it does do a good job most of the time.

The program's interface is quite intuitive, with a wizard that walks you through each step … Read more

Free business software isn't quite the same thing as free money, unless you're in business--especially by yourself or in a start-up, mom-and-pop, or other small enterprise that lives or dies by the bottom line. That's when tools like Nevitium Invoice Manager look more and more like money growing on trees. It's a top-quality invoice and quotes management utility that is free to use and distribute. It can manage customer and vendor relations, and it even includes a simple yet effective inventory manager.

Installing and setting up Nevitium involves two specific steps. First, we followed a multitabbed … Read more

PDFs can be useful but they can also be a pain; at one time or another, most of us have encountered a PDF that we wished were in an editable format. ByteScout PDF Viewer is a basic program that lets you not only view PDFs but also export them in editable formats. It's nothing fancy, but it does work.

The program's interface is plain, with a few buttons across the top for its features. You can open and view PDFs, print them, and export them as HTML, text, or Word files. That's the extent of what ByteScout … Read more

Adobe Systems, creator of the Portable Document Format standard used for digital documents, has acquired EchoSign, a company specializing in electronic signature technology.

The move means Adobe will get new abilities for its document-handling software. Electronic signatures have held the promise for years of letting people sign documents without having to resort to the paper-based hassles of scanning, faxing, and mailing, but haven't made major inroads.

EchoSign and Adobe hope to change this, naturally. Adobe has been working hard to embed its products as deeply into business computing as Microsoft Office, and EchoSign is part of that effort.

"… Read more

Mozilla programmers have achieved a goal to build a PDF reader out of Web programming technology, the "pixel-perfect" rendering of a particular file.

The file, a research paper on fast execution of JavaScript (PDF), contains formatted text, graphics, tables, and graphical diagrams. With the high-quality rendering, programmers Andreas Gal and Chris Jones declared the pdf.js mature enough to warrant the 0.2 version number yesterday.

The pdf.js project, introduced to the world in June, uses JavaScript and HTML5's Canvas For to process and display the file. Version 0.2 adds a better user interface, support … Read more

Google Chrome's built-in PDF viewer can make opening PDFs super quick. Unfortunately, you don't have access to all of the same tools you can use in apps like Adobe Reader. So how can you choose to download or open PDFs in standalone apps rather than the browser window? It's a quick fix if you follow these steps:

Step 1: Open Chrome and type "about:plugins" into the omnibox at the top.

Step 2: Scroll down and find Chrome PDF Viewer.

Step 3: Click the "Disable" link to prevent PDFs from loading within Chrome.… Read more

PDF files have long been an awkward fit with the Web, but a new project from the developers of Firefox shows how online PDFs are changing for the better.

For years, the only way to view them was with viewer software from Adobe Systems, which created the Portable Document Format in the 1990s. Clicking a link to a PDF often meant a wait as the software loaded, followed by an alien interface, framed within the browser window, that meant actions like searching and printing were different. It's faster today, but PDFs still don't feel like native Web documents. … Read more