[MlMt] Inject custom javascript into Message View

[Marco Carmosino]

I've tried this feature before, and the issue (as you noted) is 
partially that MathML isn't supported by all clients, but even worse it 
doesn't degrade gracefully. So people in email threads are frequently 
unable to read my rendered HTML message, as (AFAIK) gmail just strips 
mathML when displaying, and this completely destroys the content of the 
message. Then people have to switch to viewing the plaintext message, 
which loses my other formatting and is annoying (also some math people 
are pretty non-technical). So, unfortunately, mathML is un-usable for 
nice math in email if you need to communicate frequently with a rotating 
cast of people, just owing to how rough the ecosystem for it is.

In a perfect would, I would send two-part messages with a normal 
markdown HTML render, but people using mailmate or some other reasonable 
client could use markdown+mathjax on the text/plain chunk of the message 
to render it nicely in their local viewer.

Another solution is automatically turning on the MathML bundle _only_ 
for specific recipients who have known-good email clients; ie math gets 
rendered as plaintext for everyone who isn't whitelisted, because I 
often have email threads that have to go between some people who have 
good email software and some who don't. This seem like it might be even 
worse than the above, because then it breaks threading, because 
different recipients are getting truly different messages... Maybe you 
could bundle all three objects into a message, and have mailmate prefer 
an HTML+MathML part? Could it be ensured that bad email clients only try 
to render the no-mathML HTML?

Anyway I realize that this is a super-niche concern. Would that the 
world was a better place for MathML. But now that I'm reminded of the 
feature I can at least try and get all my mac friends on MailMate for 
it, and grow a little circle of people sending emails to each other with 
math that actually looks decent.

best,

-- marco

On 13 Jun 2017, at 7:09, Benny Kjær Nielsen wrote:

> On 13 Jun 2017, at 15:49, Marco Carmosino wrote:
>
>> For whatever it's worth, another application of javascript in MM web 
>> view executed on plain-text messages is rendering equations. My 
>> friends often send me markdown sprinkled with latex, and if I could 
>> run mathjax in MM web view, this would make a lot of my email _way_ 
>> more readable. Nicely rendered equations instead of stuff like 
>> `$g_{i,j}(z) = f(z|_{S_{i}})$` scattered all over would make my life 
>> a lot easier. Heck, this would probably help me sell a few copies of 
>> mailmate -- email with readable equations is a killer feature for 
>> mathematicians, and currently there's _no_ good solution for this 
>> anywhere.
>
> MailMate doesn't use MathJax exactly because of its reliance on 
> Javascript, but MailMate does support the use of MathML. Its 
> usefulness depends on the receiving email client, but it works quite 
> well in MailMate:
>
> ~~~math
> ((n(n+1))/2)^2
> ~~~
>
> It can also be used inline, ``a^2 + b^2 = c^2``. There's both a TeX 
> variant and an ASCIIMath variant.
>
> It is documented 
> [here](https://manual.mailmate-app.com/preferences#html-styling).
>
> -- 
> Benny


> _______________________________________________
> mailmate mailing list
> mailmate at lists.freron.com
> https://lists.freron.com/listinfo/mailmate
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.freron.com/pipermail/mailmate/attachments/20170613/b7ec683c/attachment.html>