[Java-gnome-developer] Superscripts

[Andrew C. <an...@op...>]

Have you ever written something where you put a footnote immediately
after an exponent?

I've got 6 × 10²⁴ in a document (note the use of U+2074 for the '⁴'
character).

Would you ever have a case where after the ⁴ there was a superscripted
footnote, say 1 or † ?

The question arises because, for exponents, one can use the unicode
superscript numerals to good effect, whereas for the general
superscripted footnote you can't get away with it (dagger being a good
example why) and need to manually use a smaller font & set a rise, etc

Doing this manually with java-gnome isn't a problem; when drawing with
Pango you use a SizeAttribute and a RiseAttribute and you're on your
way.
http://java-gnome.sourceforge.net/4.0/doc/api/org/gnome/pango/SizeAttribute.html
http://java-gnome.sourceforge.net/4.0/doc/api/org/gnome/pango/RiseAttribute.html

(the caveats of
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subscript_and_superscript
notwithstanding; I don't know of any libre fonts that have proper
typographic support for all upper and lower case latin characters (let
alone any other language, so you're stuck with doing it yourself if you
want other than 1-9 super or sub)

As far as I can tell, footnotes and exponents are the only time one
actually _uses_ superscript. And I've never seen a footnote beside an
exponent in anything I've ever done.

A screenshot with a whack of artificial footnotes & citations is at
http://research.operationaldynamics.com/files/andrew/FootnotesAndExponents.png
as you can see the only weird one is the footnote after the 10^24
exponent. But other than that it all seems really sane (especially
footnote #42, which was the original one when I was laying out the
typography). The point is kinda to de-emphasize the notes markers,
frankly, and that seems to be successful. The exponents, on the other
hand, really does look good with the Unicode superscript characters.

Anyway I thought I'd see if anyone cared to offer views on the topic.

Cheers :)

AfC
Sydney