Help requested: debugging "Can't make callback..." error

[Thomas Kluyver]

Hi all,

We're on the cusp of releasing notebook 5.1, but the release candidate has been affected by a mysterious bug which we don't properly understand and can't reproduce to investigate it. The symptom is notebooks failing to load with an error dialog saying:

"Can't make callback from given data"

https://github.com/jupyter/notebook/issues/2747

That error message is found in Mathjax, but it's not clear what data is being passed, or what the difference is between the situations when it works and those when it doesn't. There should be more details in the JS console, but for some reason there aren't.

If you'd like to help us get notebook 5.1 out, please take a moment to:

1. Install the RC (pip install --upgrade --pre notebook) and see if you can reproduce this issue. Tell us whether you experienced the issue or not, along with details about the environment: what browser, what platform, any extensions you use, what notebooks it fails on.

2. If you can reproduce it, also try installing from master. I don't think this error was reported until we made an RC, so maybe it's a problem with the release process. Instructions on installing from master here:

http://jupyter-notebook.readthedocs.io/en/stable/contributing.html#setting-up-a-development-environment

3. If you can reproduce it and you have some JS skills, please jump in and help us figure out what's going on!

Thanks in advance,

Thomas