Superscript and Subscript Characters in General Use

[Richard Wordingham]

On Tue, 10 Jan 2017 11:03:24 +0000
Alastair Houghton <alastair at alastairs-place.net> wrote:

> Does anyone besides Marcel have any input on that idea?  Is it worth
> writing a proposal to add SUPERSCRIPT and SUBSCRIPT?  To give some
> examples:
> 
>   S^{té}
> 
>   U+0053 LATIN CAPITAL LETTER S
>   U+0074 LATIN SMALL LETTER T
>   U+???? SUPERSCRIPT
>   U+0065 LATIN SMALL LETTER E
>   U+???? SUPERSCRIPT
>   U+0301 COMBINING ACUTE ACCENT
> 
>   i_{j}
> 
>   U+0069 LATIN SMALL LETTER I
>   U+0070 LATIN SMALL LETTER J
>   U+???? SUBSCRIPT
> 
> Perhaps the code points U+209E and U+209F could be used for SUBSCRIPT
> and SUPERSCRIPT respectively?

I would suggest using a pair of variation selectors instead.  It's no
messier than ideographic compatibility characters, and I think it is
actually less messy.  However, I would further suggest creating the
variation sequences only when the corresponding superscript or subscript
form does not exist.

Richard.