Prevent JSmol from phoning home

[jcamp0x2a]

The JSmol library -- invoked when using viewer='jmol' or viewer='canvas3d' from the Jupyter notebook -- is sending an HTTP request to a tracking script at chemapps.stolaf.edu that then uses Google Analytics:

GET /jmol/JmolTracker.php?id=UA-45940799-1&applet=Jmol._Canvas2D%20(Jmol)&version=2019-06-08%2000:17:46%20(JSmol/j2s)&appver=14.29.51&url=about%3Asrcdoc HTTP/1.1
Host: chemapps.stolaf.edu
User-Agent: ...
...
Referer: http://localhost:8888/notebooks/.../mynotebook.ipynb
...

These requests are not essential to the functioning of JSmol, so in the interest of furthering users' digital privacy, the proposed change prevents such requests from occurring.

The instruction to disable the tracking request was found at: https://sourceforge.net/p/jmol/mailman/message/31869453/

Component: graphics

Keywords: jmol jsmol tracker tracking telemetry privacy

Author: Joshua Campbell

Branch: bdd7bf6

Reviewer: Paul Masson

Issue created by migration from https://trac.sagemath.org/ticket/30030

[paulmasson]

comment:1

When this is ready for review you can mark it positive for me

[paulmasson]

Reviewer: Paul Masson

[jcamp0x2a]

comment:2

Sorry, I thought I had put it in review earlier, but I was in error. I will move it to positive review as requested.

[vbraun]

Changed branch from u/gh-jcamp0x2a/disable-jsmol-tracker to bdd7bf6

[dimpase]

comment:5

This has broken Sage notebook.
Namely, after

./sage --notebook

neither existing notebooks, not new notebooks (be they Sage or Python3)

may be opened

[dimpase]

Changed commit from bdd7bf6 to none

[dimpase]

comment:6

however, reverting/rebuilding Sage with this commit out, and then pulling the branch and re-building makes everything work (or "work") - could it be some caching going on?

I see this on !Linux/Firefox

[dimpase]

comment:7

In the first run I saw some Warnings (404 on Mathjax stuff) - perhaps it was a temporary issue.

[paulmasson]

comment:8

Replying to @dimpase:

In the first run I saw some Warnings (404 on Mathjax stuff) - perhaps it was a temporary issue.

The problems with the notebook are not due to this ticket. Starting a new notebook with 9.2.beta4 I get errors that Mathjax cannot be found because the nbextensions directory is not being served by the local server. That is a serious issue that would not be caused by turning off Google tracking in JSmol.