(part 4) when scratching an itch becomes a stupid timesink

This is part 4 of a post about how adding a keyboard short-cut for the equation editor in google docs turned in to a week long mission into foreign lands such as google closure, chrome extension API, XPCwrappers and even a bit of C++ 


(Or: Cowboy coding at its most best.)

(part 3) when scratching an itch becomes a stupid timesink

This is part 3 of a post about how adding a keyboard short-cut for the equation editor in google docs turned in to a week long mission into foreign lands such as google closure, chrome extension API, XPCwrappers and even a bit of C++ 

So today's task;

Clicking the "Insert equation" menu item, or the "New Equation..." button in the toolbar cause google docs to run some Javascript which eventually initiates the equation editor widget in the document, in-line at the caret location.
So the task is to find the event that the browser is generating, and google docs is catching, and create one of those events programmatically.

(part 2) when scratching an itch becomes a stupid timesink

This is part 2 of a post about how adding a keyboard short-cut for the equation editor in google docs turned in to a week long mission into foreign lands such as google closure, chrome extension API, XPCwrappers and even a bit of C++ 

So the task of adding a keystroke for the insert new equation widget came down to 2 sub-tasks.

1. catch the keystroke event
2. call the application insert equation function.

(part 1) when scratching an itch becomes a stupid timesink

How adding a keyboard short-cut for the equation editor in google docs turned in to a week long mission into foreign lands such as google closure, chrome extension API, XPCwrappers and even a bit of C++

(For the title of the post I was trying to think of the suitable case in the "scratching an itch" software development analogy for when the problem starts consuming time and effort for little reward, and I thought of maybe an over engineered robotic itch scratcher anyway I gave up and abandoned the analogy)

the immoral computer

“I’m Hitler?” You said, appalled.

“And you’re the millions he killed.”

Those lines are from a story called The Egg, by Andy Weir which describes how the "you" in the story meet God in the afterlife.

3 different number micro-worlds

In my undistinguished academic history there have been 3 phases of operating in 3 different sets of number scalings. They were Big Numbers, binary numbers, and probabilities and working with them each was interesting (if only in a number geek way).