(dsssl) Superscripts

[tmcd@xxxxxxxxx]

I was looking about in the archives for how to handle superscripts in
running text.  (I actually don't know why I want to do it yet.  One of
the users mentioned that she'd like to be able to do <sup>...</sup> as
in HTML, and I've asked her why.  Anyway.)

I saw, in 1999,

    Subject: Re: Future of DSSSL: What about PDF?
    From: Sebastian Rahtz <s.rahtz@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
    Date: Fri, 5 Mar 1999 12:25:27 +0000 (GMT)

    Joerg F. Wittenberger writes:
     > than tex is.  The hard point is that the lout formating model
     > is much simpler than dsssl's but does not match in some more
     > artificial topics.

    Yes. the TeX stuff does 95% of what DSSSL needs, but starts
    stumbling over some portions of the remaining 5%, and falls flat
    on its face sometimes. The trouble is that what look like very
    obscure artificial things end up being used to solve apparently
    simple problems :-}

    If you want an example of a mismatch between DSSSL and TeX (is it
    the same in Lout), DSSSL has the concept of raising the baseline
    to do superscripts. for arbitrary amounts of text, spanning lines,
    what have you. TeX just doesn't think like that. Yes, of course
    you work around the simple cases immediately, but then come the
    exceptions....

    Sebastian

Can anyone expand on that?  One of the output formats I generate for
is PDF, hence TeX, and I'd like to know how to convince TeX to do it
for simple cases (presumably 1, 2, ..., 9 or so).

-- 
Tim McDaniel, tmcd@xxxxxxxxx; tmcd@xxxxxxxxxx is my work address

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