Support for <(sub|sup)>

[John Gruber]

Michel Fortin <michel.fortin at michelf.com> wrote on 04/04/05 at 10:40pm:

> Nice idea. I like it too. Sad `<sub>` with `_` doesn't work, because 
> that seems pretty much standard to me for scientific documents. I think 
> Textile use `~` for subscript, maybe we could use that too.

`~` is available, but it doesn't feel like "subscript" to me.
Whereas `^` is already used for it traditionally, and just the look
of the character makes sense. Ideally there'd be a character that
looked like an upside down `^`.


> Now, about superscript, wouldn't it be more natural to write it this 
> way?
> 
>   Ba^2+ + OH^-
> 
> The rule could be enhanced by saying superscript stops on the next `^` 
> *or* on the next whitespace character, whichever come first. Of course 
> it couldn't handle spaces in superscript, but how often do we use that? 
> Using real tags will still work for these cases.

Yeah, I thought the same thing, except that if we did the whitespace
rule, maybe we should just do away with the "closing" `^` completely.

But what about something like this:

    x^2.

Is the dot part of the superscript?

The advantage to using closing ^'s:

    x^2^.
    x^2.^
    

is that it's completely obvious when the dot is in the superscript.

Same would go for other puncuations characters.

-J.G.