[OS X TeX] Where does the assumption that large counts are phone numbers arise?

[Richard Koch]

Doug McKenna,

The behavior you report is new to me, but definitely reproducible. It has nothing to do with TeX, pdfTeX, or TeXShop. It comes from Apple's "Instant Hotspot" technology, which allows Macs to communicate with nearby iPhones and iPads.

The web page

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7556483?sortBy=best

explains how to turn some of this off, but I didn't find a command that says STAY AWAY FROM MY PHONE.

Dick Koch

On Feb 12, 2024, at 4:03 PM, Doug McKenna <doug at mathemaesthetics.com> wrote:

I'm running TeXShop 4.7 on MacOS 12.1, using pdfTeX, Version 3.141592653-2.6-1.40.22 (TeX Live 2021).

I'm writing a math paper that references a sequence of combinatorial counts.  The sequence gets large pretty fast.

Here is a MWE:

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
\documentclass[letterpaper,11pt]{article}
\begin{document}
For $n=1\dots 7$ the counts are $0, 4, 40, 2244, 185920, 106912792, 90124167440$.

In PDF output, click on either of the two final (non-phone) numbers.
\end{document}
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

When viewing the PDF after typesetting, I just discovered that clicking on either of the last two counts brings up the FaceTime app on my Mac.  After my initial WTF confusion, I then discovered that hovering the mouse for a while over either large count in the PDF raises a little hint box showing the count prefixed with "tel: ".

These are not telephone numbers, and it's annoying for someone to have assumed they are, allegedly for my convenience.

Where in all the pdfTeX machinery is this assumption being made, if at all?  Is it in the PDF file itself, or is it in the MacOS PDF display library that TeXShop is using?  Does this only occur on MacOS?

Can I affirmatively do something in my TeX code that creates the PDF to prevent this false positive?


Doug McKenna
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