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