Super- and subscripts in HTML+

Dave_Raggett (dsr@hplb.hpl.hp.com)
Mon, 7 Jun 93 10:18:50 BST


Bob Stayton, Technical Publications at The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc.
has requested that we include support for subscripts and superscripts:

> We use superscripts primarily for trademark attribution
> (e.g., TM and r-circle), as well as in a few instances of
> mathematical exponents within a sentence. We also use
> subscripts as a mathematical index on certain man pages. I
> wasn't asking for a full treatment of mathematical
> equations, which I agree should be handled as embedded
> figures. But a simple exponent within a sentence should
> not be forced into being a graphic in my opinion. The
> formatting is relatively simple (move up or down a
> half line until turned off), and would seem to be
> within the scope of the simple formatting done
> in WWW clients.

I have just added these as presentation styles to the inline emphasis tag:

There has been a lot of interest lately in
mc<emph tag="super">2</emph>.
i.e 2
There has been a lot of interest lately in mc .

(HP-speak for measurement, computation and communication)

The suggestions for rendering emphasis are:

a) allow users to tailor the display via user prefernces
e.g. italic, bold, underline, highlight, super/subscript

b) default to italic or highlighted text for unrecognised types

These changes will make their way to the CERN copy soonish.

Regards,

Dave Raggett

p.s. Does anyone mind if I change the generic emphasis tag from EMPH to EM?