Allow me to indicate that MathML is by far not the only content-type which has allowed itself a public UTI. SVG and TAR are also there and not specified by Apple. Wikipedia's links to UTI shows a big list.

Maybe you could ask relevant persons what has been the process and what is the current process? If a process existed to (ask to) register the MathML UTI, we would have used it when MathML3 was written.

Since I'm an engineer in the WebKit team at Apple, I can bring up this up with the relevant folks. I'm just pointing out that getting the spec changed isn't enough to make it work on Apple platforms.

For now, it might be advisable to say that UA MAY support MathML instead of MUST or SHOULD.

I'm afraid that the fact that the public subtree of UTIs is from Apple was not known when we did this (probably in 2009). The same holds for other types actually.

The wikipedia page about UTIs indicates that the public sub-tree is managed by Apple. But that page started in 2010. I do not remember the UTI documentation stating that exclusivity. Another aspect which I don't remember reading is that UTIs would be close to reversed domain names.

What can we do from now?

• Go for some archeology into the different versions of Apple's documentation?
• Change the UTIs? (they are currently implemented by MS Word and MathPlayer).
• Try to involve an Apple active person to define the public mathml types? (who?)

Thanks in advance.

PS: On the MicroSoft side, we had in the Math Working Group a member of MicroSoft which assured that names are free to create by apps. An example of situation where a standard such as MathML is useful to propose converging names.

Thank you @rniwa for the extra links. I don't see a disagreement except for "it will not work". We had already spotted at the time that media-types are not exactly the same as UTIs. That is why the MathML specification includes UTI specifications:

• MathML: Macintosh Universal Type Identifier code public.mathml conforming to public.xml
• MathML-presentation: Macintosh Universal Type Identifier code public.mathml.presentation conforming to public.mathml (described above) conforming to public.xml
• MathML-content: Macintosh Universal Type Identifier code: public.mathml.content conforming to public.mathml (described above) conforming to public.xml

Presumably you're referring to the names of MathML encodings. I wasn't aware that this section existed but I don't think this recommendation is sound. public. prefix is reserved for the (operating) system. It does follow the general pattern of what Apple defined for other markup languages but it doesn't mean that it's officially sanctioned. Had I been aware of this, I would have raised a concern about this before the spec advanced to the recommendation state.

Thank you @rniwa for the extra links. I don't see a disagreement except for "it will not work". We had already spotted at the time that media-types are not exactly the same as UTIs. That is why the MathML specification includes UTI specifications:

• MathML: Macintosh Universal Type Identifier code public.mathml conforming to public.xml
• MathML-presentation: Macintosh Universal Type Identifier code public.mathml.presentation conforming to public.mathml (described above) conforming to public.xml
• MathML-content: Macintosh Universal Type Identifier code: public.mathml.content conforming to public.mathml (described above) conforming to public.xml

That is also why I sometimes recommend media-type declarations to include UTIs and Windows Clipboard flavour names when I see them passing by on the media-types mailing-list.

I would like to note that this issue is about "supported typed" and includes UTIs and Clipboard flavour names. Do you still see that "This isn't really possible in a way that's interoperable across different applications" ?

paul

@rniwa : I don't get the point of being impossible. UTIs for MathML supported types are already defined.

MIME type is defined. UTI in AppKit / UIKit is a slightly different concept, and that's what applications on Apple platforms would use to identify the type of a content. MIME types don't matter much on Apple platforms since that's not the primary mechanism by which the content type is identified by applications.

Are you claiming that it is not possible because Apple does not define it as system-wide type?

That's right although I would not rule out the possibility that Apple may define the UTI type for MathML in the future.

Why would this prevent the clipboard-APIs implementations to copy the appropriate type as expressed in a way that is specific to the platform?

Well, because if different applications don't agree which UTI to use to identify MathML, then it's not possible for different applications to recognize the content as such. Say, WebKit / Safari uses public.mathml to expose MathML. If other applications were expecting public.xml to contain MathML then such an application won't find it.

Microsoft also does not, they try to define the least possible. Linux does none.

While Windows SDK also has a small set of the standard clipboard format types defined, format types are often defined using MIME type strings themselves so it would not be entirely incompatible to use application/mathml+xml as the format type string.

GTK+ also uses MIME type to define GdkContentProvider for example so having MIME type defined works there too.

@rniwa : I don't get the point of being impossible. UTIs for MathML supported types are already defined. Are you claiming that it is not possible because Apple does not define it as system-wide type? Microsoft also does not, they try to define the least possible. Linux does none.

Why would this prevent the clipboard-APIs implementations to copy the appropriate type as expressed in a way that is specific to the platform?

@marcoscaceres : On macOS (and on windows I think), browsers that are invoked with the clipboard operation e.clipboardData.setData('application/mathml+xml', '<math><mfrac><mn>3</mn><mn>5</mn></mfrac></math>'); just put this content as an exotic org.mozilla.custom-clipdata or similarly private types with Chrome or Safari. Test page here: http://direct.hoplahup.net/tmp/tryclipboardOps.html . You will also see that HTML comes through.

So on macOS and other Apple platforms, there is system declared UTI for MathML or SVG. As a result, this isn't really possible in a way that's interoperable across different applications: https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Miscellaneous/Reference/UTIRef/Articles/System-DeclaredUniformTypeIdentifiers.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40009259

We could declare it as a generic XML content but I don't think that'd help the situation.

@bkardell : Re: your comment: for me this is a different story that is not bound to clipboard-apis. I would move this to an issue in our MathML spec.

@marcoscaceres : On macOS (and on windows I think), browsers that are invoked with the clipboard operation e.clipboardData.setData('application/mathml+xml', '<math><mfrac><mn>3</mn><mn>5</mn></mfrac></math>'); just put this content as an exotic org.mozilla.custom-clipdata or similarly private types with Chrome or Safari. Test page here: http://direct.hoplahup.net/tmp/tryclipboardOps.html . You will also see that HTML comes through. This call is the object of this issue.

When you have MathML in a web-page and try to copy it, you obtain HTML with, sometimes the MathML in it.

If I set the content-type in the response to these, it changes the parsing behavior in FF from HTML (creating the host doc, etc), in WebKit/Chromium (Linux) it causes the document to be downloaded instead of displayed. I think some of this is underspecified and not all of these observations should necessarily be the case, but some it'll also change the application of some things, I guess. In FF, if set:

• the parser is xml style/throws on errors (not the case with core on an element in HTML)
• the document root will be <math> not generated in a host <html> doc, and all that follows from that in terms of different trees (:root, document.documentElement, etc are diff).
• scripts and styles in tokens will be displayed, and not run
• an <a href=""> inside a token will work differently - without the mime these are regular HTML links, with them they are MathML links on effectively 'unknown element' (tho there wasn't really IDL for these even until recently with core, but MathML allowed any element to have an href which were really 'somewhat link like') That is, these aren't entirely well specified, or compatible. An example though is attributes like rel/target, etc are not also supported and default tab indexes aren't the same. Probably there is also more on the relation of linked resources.
• There might be more, but that's all I can find/think of atm

@lgarron: just to be sure, do you still intend adapting this patch soon? It would be valuable.

Copying multiple items where each item has multiple representation is a thing in iOS & iPadOS. e.g. you can select multiple images in Photos and copy them over to Notes and paste them all. WebKit supports this capability for both reading & writing.

Thanks, that's helpful to know. So multiple ClipboardItems are needed. I suggest adding the iOS/iPadOS use case to the spec. Otherwise, this question might arise again.

Since there are operating systems that support multiple clipboards, it seems the spec should state that ClipboardItems should stem from exactly one of them. But this should be dealt with in a separate ticket.

Bumps glob-parent from 5.1.0 to 5.1.2. <details> <summary>Release notes</summary> <p><em>Sourced from <a href="https://github.com/gulpjs/glob-parent/releases">glob-parent's releases</a>.</em></p> <blockquote> <h2>v5.1.2</h2> <h3>Bug Fixes</h3> <ul> <li>eliminate ReDoS (<a href="https://github-redirect.dependabot.com/gulpjs/glob-parent/issues/36">#36</a>) (<a href="https://github.com/gulpjs/glob-parent/commit/f9231168b0041fea3f8f954b3cceb56269fc6366">f923116</a>)</li> </ul> <h2>v5.1.1</h2> <h3>Bug Fixes</h3> <ul> <li>unescape exclamation mark (<a href="https://github-redirect.dependabot.com/gulpjs/glob-parent/issues/26">#26</a>) (<a href="https://github.com/gulpjs/glob-parent/commit/a98874f1a59e407f4fb1beb0db4efa8392da60bb">a98874f</a>)</li> </ul> </blockquote> </details> <details> <summary>Changelog</summary> <p><em>Sourced from <a href="https://github.com/gulpjs/glob-parent/blob/main/CHANGELOG.md">glob-parent's changelog</a>.</em></p> <blockquote> <h3><a href="https://github.com/gulpjs/glob-parent/compare/v5.1.1...v5.1.2">5.1.2</a> (2021-03-06)</h3> <h3>Bug Fixes</h3> <ul> <li>eliminate ReDoS (<a href="https://github-redirect.dependabot.com/gulpjs/glob-parent/issues/36">#36</a>) (<a href="https://github.com/gulpjs/glob-parent/commit/f9231168b0041fea3f8f954b3cceb56269fc6366">f923116</a>)</li> </ul> <h2><a href="https://www.github.com/gulpjs/glob-parent/compare/v5.1.2...v6.0.0">6.0.0</a> (2021-05-03)</h2> <h3>⚠ BREAKING CHANGES</h3> <ul> <li>Correct mishandled escaped path separators (<a href="https://github-redirect.dependabot.com/gulpjs/glob-parent/issues/34">#34</a>)</li> <li>upgrade scaffold, dropping node <10 support</li> </ul> <h3>Bug Fixes</h3> <ul> <li>Correct mishandled escaped path separators (<a href="https://github-redirect.dependabot.com/gulpjs/glob-parent/issues/34">#34</a>) (<a href="https://www.github.com/gulpjs/glob-parent/commit/32f6d52663b7addac38d0dff570d8127edf03f47">32f6d52</a>), closes <a href="https://github-redirect.dependabot.com/gulpjs/glob-parent/issues/32">#32</a></li> </ul> <h3>Miscellaneous Chores</h3> <ul> <li>upgrade scaffold, dropping node <10 support (<a href="https://www.github.com/gulpjs/glob-parent/commit/e83d0c5a411947cf69eb58f36349db80439c606f">e83d0c5</a>)</li> </ul> <h3><a href="https://github.com/gulpjs/glob-parent/compare/v5.1.0...v5.1.1">5.1.1</a> (2021-01-27)</h3> <h3>Bug Fixes</h3> <ul> <li>unescape exclamation mark (<a href="https://github-redirect.dependabot.com/gulpjs/glob-parent/issues/26">#26</a>) (<a href="https://github.com/gulpjs/glob-parent/commit/a98874f1a59e407f4fb1beb0db4efa8392da60bb">a98874f</a>)</li> </ul> </blockquote> </details> <details> <summary>Commits</summary> <ul> <li><a href="https://github.com/gulpjs/glob-parent/commit/eb2c439de448c779b450472e591a2bc9e37e9668"><code>eb2c439</code></a> chore: update changelog</li> <li><a href="https://github.com/gulpjs/glob-parent/commit/12bcb6c45c942e2d05fc1e6ff5402e72555b54b6"><code>12bcb6c</code></a> chore: release 5.1.2</li> <li><a href="https://github.com/gulpjs/glob-parent/commit/f9231168b0041fea3f8f954b3cceb56269fc6366"><code>f923116</code></a> fix: eliminate ReDoS (<a href="https://github-redirect.dependabot.com/gulpjs/glob-parent/issues/36">#36</a>)</li> <li><a href="https://github.com/gulpjs/glob-parent/commit/0b014a7962789b2d8f2cf0b6311f40667aecd62c"><code>0b014a7</code></a> chore: add JSDoc returns information (<a href="https://github-redirect.dependabot.com/gulpjs/glob-parent/issues/33">#33</a>)</li> <li><a href="https://github.com/gulpjs/glob-parent/commit/2b24ebd64b2a045aa167c825376335555da139fd"><code>2b24ebd</code></a> chore: generate initial changelog</li> <li><a href="https://github.com/gulpjs/glob-parent/commit/9b6e8747ddf664c9b1a36fbd2a23e43a35b8a52f"><code>9b6e874</code></a> chore: release 5.1.1</li> <li><a href="https://github.com/gulpjs/glob-parent/commit/749c35ee084498ebb1ce8cc9cf655f6aa4d623c5"><code>749c35e</code></a> ci: try wrapping the JOB_ID in a string</li> <li><a href="https://github.com/gulpjs/glob-parent/commit/5d39def48c9e9eaee0ca36dafdf7b6cdcd875b85"><code>5d39def</code></a> ci: attempt to switch to published coveralls</li> <li><a href="https://github.com/gulpjs/glob-parent/commit/0b5b37f674a7e207457c99cb2f123299e5ab31c9"><code>0b5b37f</code></a> ci: put the npm step back in for only Windows</li> <li><a href="https://github.com/gulpjs/glob-parent/commit/473f5d87644bf19f32c53de21d2420f03aa02e5a"><code>473f5d8</code></a> ci: update azure build images</li> <li>Additional commits viewable in <a href="https://github.com/gulpjs/glob-parent/compare/v5.1.0...v5.1.2">compare view</a></li> </ul> </details> <br />

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I am trying to get data copied from exel. in html this is a table and styles separately. when getting html / text i see <table border = "0" cellpadding = "0" cellspacing = "0" width = "128" style = "border-collapse: collapse; width: 96pt "> <colgroup> <col width = "64" span = "2" style = "width: 48pt"> </colgroup> <tbody> <tr height = "20" style = "height: 15.0pt"> <td height = "20" class = "xl70" align = "right" width = "64" style = "height: 15.0pt; width: 48pt "> 11 </td> <td class = "xl65" align = "right" width = "64" style = "width: 48pt"> 12 </td> </tr> <tr height = "20" style = "height: 15.0pt"> <td height = "20" class = "xl66" align = "right" style = "height: 15.0pt"> 21 </td> <td class = "xl67" align = "right"> 22 </td> </tr> <tr height = "20" style = "height: 15.0pt"> <td height = "20" class = "xl68" align = "right" style = "height: 15.0pt"> 31 </td> <td class = "xl69" align = "right"> 32 </td> </tr> <! - EndFragment -> </tbody> </table> Accordingly, the xlXX style classes are lost somewhere in the clipboard. Moreover, when I receive data from the event "paste", then I see the full html. Js code using - const clipboardItems = await navigator.clipboard.read (); for (const clipboardItem from clipboardItems) { for (const type for clipboardItem.types) { const blob = wait for clipboardItem.getType (type); console.log (URL.createObjectURL (blob)); const td = pending (new answer (blob)). text (); console.log (blob.isClosed); console.log (td);

Thanks for raising the issue @annevk. We might need to find an additional editor to help support the current editor.

@LJWatson @marcoscaceres it's pretty clear at this point that this specification has a maintenance problem, e.g., including IDL without a normative description of what the IDL does. Unfortunately I don't have a proposal for how to resolve that, but I thought I'd at least bring it to your attention.