Suggestion for superscripts

[Hans Åberg]

> On 4 Jun 2021, at 10:30, raymond mercier via Unicode <unicode at corp.unicode.org> wrote:
> 
> Mathematicians use TeX for superscripts. It can be extended it to include Unicode, making XeTeX.
> https://www.overleaf.com/learn/latex/Articles/What's_in_a_Name:_A_Guide_to_the_Many_Flavours_of_TeX
> Isn’t that the way to go ?

There is difference whether you merely want an output math rendition, or an input legible and processable for other purposes than display. If you have a program processing math, then using TeX variants is hard enough to be a distraction, and the formulas are not copiable, not originally even the Unicode input in original TeX as it gets translated.

ConTeXt [1] is Unicode friendly, uses UTF-8 as default input, aiming at unifying all those older variants. It is available in the TeX Live distribution [2]: Just typeset using 'context …'.

With a good text only input, a program like ConTeXt can produce a PDF with reasonably copiable formulas. That is, as long as one does not use superscript and subscripts other than what is already available in Unicode.

1. https://wiki.contextgarden.net/Main_Page
2. https://tug.org/texlive/