Re: Copy MathML (was: Re: final note on MathML from a user perspective)

Hello all,

On 25 Oct 2024, at 2:15, jamil kazoun wrote:
>> Copy would include the option to copy and paste as MathML.

As for the clipboard, there are three different strands:

- MathML in plain text which is done by old web pages… this works well 
but often runs the risk of showing the source and requires, otherwise, 
to “sniff the content” when pasting. It “often works” but its 
essential nature makes it fragile (e.g. no mailer that I know of would 
render it as a formula).

- MathML as clipboard format (as [in 
MathML3](https://www.w3.org/TR/MathML3/appendixb.html) or MathML within 
HTML as clipboard format, which is defined in individual platforms). 
This works well for desktop applications and avoids the problem above. 
But it fails for web-pages until we obtain some kind of “sanity 
agreement” avoiding that MathML gets wiped out for security reasons 
(we have a [bug](https://github.com/w3c/mathml-core/issues/227) about 
it).

- MathML as [custom clipboard 
type](https://developer.chrome.com/blog/web-custom-formats-for-the-async-clipboard-api/) 
(experimented 
[here](https://mathmlmuses.netlify.app/trymathml-copy-customtypes/)) 
could become a solution for web-pages one day but I don’t know when.

I still think that option 2 is probably the best but I don’t know when 
this is going to be widely available. MS Word does it well and very few 
others; it also started to sniff content from plain text (and it does 
fail an amount of times).

Paul