Shoutbox

Hi,

I have been trying to write a LaTeX add-in using C#.NET for Windows Live Messenger, and I came pretty close actually. I tried it in a normal windows application first, and it worked fine. Whenever a message received contains one or more "$$" tokens, the whole message is seen as a tex string, and the double signs "$$" are replaced by a single "$". The string is stored in a .tex file (including the \begin{document} etc preamble) and then converted to a .dvi file using the command line. Finally a PNG image is created from the dvi file, again using the command line. The PNG image is shown in a separate window (I am pretty sure it's not possible to show it inline in the actual MSN window, so I'm not even going to bother trying that).

When I tried it in my MSN Add-in however, it failed, because it seems I cannot create folders, files, or anything, from within the MSN Add-in. I keep getting security exceptions on the most silly things...


So I had a look at Plus! scripting, which may work for me.


I have the following questions. If the answers to these are all yes then I am pretty confident I can get it to work.

1. Can I use basic file I/O, like creating a folder in the Common Application Data directory for example? Can I also create files on the fly without getting security exceptions?

2. Can I use the command line (cmd.exe) and determine what commands to send? If not, can I execute a batch file?

3. Can I display a PNG image (somewhere on the hard disk), either in the current MSN window (probably not), or in a separate window??


Thanks for any help!


EDIT
I thought of another question, not of grave importance, but still useful:

4. If I receive a message with emoticons, does the Message string in the script (in the ReceiveMessage event I guess) display the shortcut of the emoticon, or does it simply skip it? In other words, does the emoticon come out as :) or will it be gone from the string?


5. Can I turn emoticons off temporarily when the user is typing a message the contains the "$$" string? Otherwise, you may get emoticons in your latex string...