[XeTeX] Combined sub- and superscript - solved

[Sebastian Gerecke]

Am Sonntag 08 August 2010, 00:32:59 schrieb Ross Moore:
> Hi Peter, Sebastien,
> 
> On 08/08/2010, at 7:33 AM, Peter Dyballa <Peter_Dyballa at web.de> wrote:
> > Am 07.08.2010 um 22:44 schrieb Sebastian Gerecke:
> >> BUT: This just has to be an utter hack and I can not believe it is the
> >> way it is supposed to be done.
> > 
> > This hack is necessary because mhchem is not aware of font features, it's
> > a simple LaTeX package that maltreats simple TeX fonts in the usual
> > ways.
> > 
> >> I'm putting the scientific inferior numbers in the upper position, and
> >> the scientific superiors in the lower position. Does that make sense to
> >> anyone?
> 
> The usual LaTeX way to do this would be to use the \sideset command from
> AMSMath, that is with \usepackage{amsmath}.
> 
> But this would be placing the usual ASCII numerals, and not using the
> Unicode inferior and superior numerals. Those characters are very new to
> the TeX world. A Google search brings up only a few mentions of them on
> Microsoft pages. Thus you are not likely to find a good solution having
> easy syntax, until someone writes a macro specially for it, for use with
> XeTeX and other Unicode-aware TeX processing.
> 
> If I've understood this correctly, you want the positioning of \sideset
> with the characters being the Unicode superiors and inferiors, which are
> full-sized glyphs. Furthermore, the input syntax should be intuitive,
> allowing use of either ASCII numerals or the Unicode points directly, for
> maximum flexibility.

That is exactly what I want, yes.
The Libertine webpage promotes the sub/superscipt feature and explicitly gives 
the example of chemical formulars. That is why I thougt it would be easy to 
use that feature.


> 
> Should such support be in the unicode-math package?
> Probably not, as super-/subscripts in math usually have the usual numerical
> meaning, so it would be wrong to use separate characters, just for a
> purely visual effect.
> 
> Is a chemist going to learn about Unicode and XeTeX just to typeset isotope
> names correctly? We could be so lucky!
> 
> However maybe if someone on this list develops such a macro, it could go
> into xltxtra.sty .

The macro Mike has written works really well for me. Perhaps that could be 
included somewhere?

> 
> > Well, otherwise it would look much worse...
> 
>    Indeed.
> 
> > --
> > Mit friedvollen Grüßen
> > 
> >  Pete
> 
> Hope this helps,
> 
>       Ross
> 
> 
> --------------------------------------------------
> Subscriptions, Archive, and List information, etc.:
>   http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/xetex