Infinity subscripts

[Asmus Freytag]

It is instructive to actually follow the link to the discussion on 
stackoverflow.

The problem was labeling a coordinate axis with an expression, when it 
seemed as if "rich" text was not supported.

What eventually "worked" for the person posing the question was to use 
"_" to request a subscript.

That points to that whatever system he was using supported Unicode Plain 
Text Notation for Mathematics or perhaps some subset of it limited to 
common cases like subscript/superscript (similar to how markdown 
languages support ** for bold).

There may be good reasons for not allowing all elements of a graph to 
use fully styled rich text, but the right answer is to push more places 
to accept "plain-text like" notations that give access to some of the 
more common styles, instead of duplicating the matrix of all styles x 
all characters in Unicode.

This is particularly true for things like super/subscript that can, in 
principle, be applied to a very wide, if not unlimited range of 
characters and that are usually not supported with dedicated alternate 
glyphs in most fonts. They are therefore rendered using scaling and 
offset computations, obviating the need to communicate a font selection 
in the plain text notation.

A./

>
>> On 24 Oct 2025, at 19:40, Peter Constable via Unicode <unicode at corp.unicode.org> wrote:
>>
>> An infinity symbol might be used subscripted in math formulas, but math formulas regard higher-level markup in any case.
>>
>> In general, Unicode assumes that super- / sub-scripting should be handled by markup and formatting unless there is a strong reason for separate encoding (e.g., as required in phonetic transcription, in which a plain-text distinction is needed).
>>
>>
>> Peter
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Unicode <unicode-bounces at corp.unicode.org> On Behalf Of Andrei Enache via Unicode
>> Sent: October 21, 2025 2:22 PM
>> To: unicode at corp.unicode.org
>> Subject: Infinity subscripts
>>
>> Hi Unicode mailing list,
>>
>> I'd like to know if Unicode is able to incorporate infinity subscripts into the specification? This would help with mathematical notation as it is very common there to mark some limiting behavior of a sequence.
>>
>> Some internet discussion here:
>>
>> https://stackoverflow.com/questions/65495679/subscript-unicode-character-symbol-in-python
>> https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Programming/How-to-create-a-subscript-of-the-infinity-symbol/td-p/738302
>> https://www.reddit.com/r/Unicode/comments/zgchk6/subscript_infinity_symbol/
>>
>> Some programming languages like Mathematica (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5481216/subscripted-variables) benefit from numbered and variable name (such as x, n) subscripts for other functionality, and infinity would help with this.
>>
>> Many thanks,
>> Andrei
>>
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