May 2, 2005–Wolfram Notebook Indexer is now available for Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger’s Spotlight, Apple’s new search technology. This new plug-in lets users perform text searches of all Wolfram Notebook (.nb) documents on their local hard drives, including those that are a part of Mathematica‘s online help system. “This is an excellent tool to help users manage their work more efficiently,” says John Fultz, manager of interface technologies at Wolfram Research.

“Wolfram always works closely with Apple to integrate the latest Mac OS X technologies to improve the Mathematica end-user experience. Spotlight breaks new ground in search technologies, and we are happy to see Mathematica users on Macintosh systems reap the benefits,” states Fultz.

“Hundreds of new features, like Spotlight, make Tiger the most advanced operating system in the world,” said Ron Okamoto, Apple’s vice president of Worldwide Developer Relations. “We’re thrilled Wolfram has used the innovation in Tiger to allow instant Notebook document searching and deliver impressive ease of use.”

The Mathematica Notebook file format is Wolfram’s universal document technology. Its open, structured syntax and active content have made it the standard for technical documents. Because Notebooks are the basis for all Wolfram products, the Notebook Indexer can also search files created in Wolfram CalculationCenter, Publicon, and the more than 50 Mathematica application packages.

In addition to supplying intelligent mathematical content, the Wolfram Notebook is a rich, highly structured file format, providing extensive information about each document. Using Spotlight’s metadata search, it is now possible to search for documents by author, number of graphics or formulas, style information, or a variety of other parameters.

Wolfram Notebook Indexer is available for download. It can be installed on any Mac OS X 10.4 system.