CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ansi-escape
Joe
Joe

Reputation: 3160

Are there Ansi escape sequences for superscript and subscript?

I'm playing around with ANSI escape sequences, e.g.

echo -e "\e[91mHello\e[m"

on a Linux console to display colored text.

Now I try to use superscript and subscript output like a=b².

I read here and here about: Partial Line Down (subscript) and Partial Line Up (superscript) but I'm not sure about the exact syntax and even which terminal client might supports this.

Any suggestions about this?

Upvotes: 6

Views: 1368

Answers (1)

Thomas Dickey
Thomas Dickey

Reputation: 54562

Possibly some commercial product supports it, but it's not supported by any terminal emulator you'll encounter (unless someone modifies one just to prove a point).

The standard describes possible escape sequences, but there is no requirement that any given sequence is supported by any terminal. There are commonly supported (and assumed) sequences such as clearing the screen, but even for that, not all terminals have supported the feature.

The reason is that terminal emulators are generally used with applications (such as text editors) which assume a regular set of rows/columns, and that the text is shown compactly (no extra space such as would be needed to allow for partial line movement. Back in the day when people used typewriters, it was common to have 1.5 or 2.0 line-spacing, and get no more than 33 lines on a page. That changed, long ago.

The need for subscripts/superscripts didn't go away — Unicode provides a usable set of characters with that representation (see Superscripts and Subscripts Range: 2070–209F)

Further reading:

Upvotes: 4

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