Some of you mentioned that you'd like a way to share notebooks, at least with other Mathematica users, and that the Demonstrations Project is obviously not the correct place. Doesn't the Wolfram Library Archive accept all sorts of documents? Or is that site really so dead by now that you wouldn't expect any readers if you upload there (and share links elsewhere)?

@David J M Park Jr, I'll happily be corrected on this, but I believe package loading and any kind of file import/export are still features of Player Pro only.

I have several questions about the current state of creating and reading CDF files.

Can they use private (third party) style sheets, and packages? Many advance research papers might use private routines in packages. Could one write a document that looks like a technical paper that uses such style sheets and packages?

I'm thinking of a method where there would be something like a UserBaseDirectory for the CDF player. Then you send a zip file to a colleague or someone who was interested in the 'paper' that contained the application with package(s) and style sheets. He could just unzip it into his CDF UserBaseDirectory location and read the paper.

In Mathematica 9 it was possible to install packages and style sheets in the Wolfram CDF files, where they had Applications and style sheets, and it appeared to me to work. But WRI choked that path off.

Owning Mathematica, or at least professional Mathematica, or Premier service should be enough to produce such documents.

It should be almost as easy to produce a CDF document from a Mathematica notebook as it is to produce a PDF document.

My view is that CDF is not yet good enough, but maybe getting close. Have there been any significant improvements toward this goal since Mathematica 10.0 first came out?

I have been teaching math for the past 30 years and have used Mathematica for about the last 15. It's an amazing tool, but I have to report that after all this time, I still have TONS of problems making my materials available to a wider audience. My peers who write documents in "Word", all share their tests and notes and other documents, sharing the work. The documents are all 'dead'. but since everyone is using the same application, it's easy to collaborate. When I try to share some of my notebooks with colleagues, they are all "amazed" at what Mathematica can do but A) are not willing to change their approach and B) often find that they can't even install the CDF player to view the files because of security issues at their place of employment.

Currently, I am employed as academic support (aka , math and science tutor) at a technical school. I have hundreds of Mathematica documents that I could use to help with explaining ideas, but again, I find there is no easy way, well, in fact no way, for me to share these documents with students. I can't install any software on the schools computers, and students are all using phones and tablets so no go there.

I have always appreciated David's perspective on writing and using Mathematica as a communication tool. My question at this point is, what should I do with the hundreds of "teaching" notebooks I have? I totally agree that the demonstrations site is not the place for these. It's a great resource, but I have always wondered why there isn't some place where users could post lessons, get feedback, and make them available. Like the "Wolfram Lessons Site".

Anyway... thanks for listening... I don't suspect this has any kind of reasonable solution at the current time.

I think that this application of Mathematica is critical. This is the kind of thing that has been promised for Mathematica since almost version 1. I have used Mathematica in this way when I was working to communicate with my work colleagues, but there were significant tissues, only some of which have been addressed in recent releases.

First off, the style sheet mechanism is entirely inadequate to the task. The user should be able to embed fonts, as you can with PDF documents. There needs to be a way to globally replace, for example, Arial with something else, and not have to hint around all the variants on the styles to find them.

Having two column documents, or sections, is also useful. This functionality can be implemented with Grid[], but it is not the same as a word processor. Even for documents which are to be viewed on-screen, having two columns is a useful option.

The CDF player (or its replacement) needs to be more flexible, and allow the end user (who does not have Mathematica) to do more things. In my former company, there was an issue with installing the reader, but that is not a problem with Wolfram technology, but one with IT myopia. Still, something might be done.

I would like to see a website, similar to the Demonstrations project, where users could submit documents to share with others. The restrictions for a Demonstration — size, restrictions on text, etc. — limits what can be done. I have done some work that is not worth publishing formally, but which, I hope, would be interesting to other people, and not just Mathematica users.

I'm pretty sure that embedding fonts in a notebook document is possible. The style sheets need a good revision, with the goal of delivering an excellent experience, for both producers and consumers, of documents that will (only) be accessed on screen. With these changes, I thnk that Mathematica is up to the task.

Beyond that, having a site to share documents, similar to the Demonstrations Project website, will provide an incentive to make the documents, and to provide a showcase of good design for other users. I know that something like this has been discussed at previous Wolfram Technology Conferences, so it should be possible for Wolfram Research to do this as well.