Per and all, In TeX inside @math: ^{TEXT} In TeX otherwise: use a macro ...
I'm thinking that TeX, either inside or outside @math, should treat TEXT as text, not math. That is, if you simply want to produce the math expression a-to-the-power-of-b, you'd write @math{a^b}, rather than @math{a@sup{b}}. The difference is whether b is typeset in math italic or roman. After all, sometimes people want to typeset a word in math, as in @math{a@sup{first}}. This seems more consistent with the treatment in the other output formats. Also, since there's already a way to get math super/subscripts, but no way to get text super/subscripts, we might as well provide something new. Unless there's an argument otherwise? (FYI, Patrice has already implemented @sub and @sup per your suggestion + discussion in texi2any.) Thanks, Karl