It is instructive to actually follow the link to the discussion on
stackoverflow.
The problem was labeling a coordinate axis with an expression, when it
seemed as if "rich" text was not supported.
What eventually "worked" for the person posing the question was to use
"_" to request a subscript.
That points to that whatever system he was using supported Unicode Plain
Text Notation for Mathematics or perhaps some subset of it limited to
common cases like subscript/superscript (similar to how markdown
languages support ** for bold).
There may be good reasons for not allowing all elements of a graph to
use fully styled rich text, but the right answer is to push more places
to accept "plain-text like" notations that give access to some of the
more common styles, instead of duplicating the matrix of all styles x
all characters in Unicode.
This is particularly true for things like super/subscript that can, in
principle, be applied to a very wide, if not unlimited range of
characters and that are usually not supported with dedicated alternate
glyphs in most fonts. They are therefore rendered using scaling and
offset computations, obviating the need to communicate a font selection
in the plain text notation.
A./
On 24 Oct 2025, at 19:40, Peter Constable via Unicode
<[email protected]> wrote:
An infinity symbol might be used subscripted in math formulas, but math
formulas regard higher-level markup in any case.
In general, Unicode assumes that super- / sub-scripting should be handled by
markup and formatting unless there is a strong reason for separate encoding
(e.g., as required in phonetic transcription, in which a plain-text distinction
is needed).
Peter
-----Original Message-----
From: Unicode <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Andrei Enache via
Unicode
Sent: October 21, 2025 2:22 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Infinity subscripts
Hi Unicode mailing list,
I'd like to know if Unicode is able to incorporate infinity subscripts into the
specification? This would help with mathematical notation as it is very common
there to mark some limiting behavior of a sequence.
Some internet discussion here:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/65495679/subscript-unicode-character-symbol-in-python
https://communities.sas.com/t5/SAS-Programming/How-to-create-a-subscript-of-the-infinity-symbol/td-p/738302
https://www.reddit.com/r/Unicode/comments/zgchk6/subscript_infinity_symbol/
Some programming languages like Mathematica
(https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5481216/subscripted-variables) benefit
from numbered and variable name (such as x, n) subscripts for other
functionality, and infinity would help with this.
Many thanks,
Andrei
