Superscript & Subscript

[onkai]

Hi I’m a college student and I’ve been using bear for a good while now. I use bear for taking notes for a bunch of my classes but especially STEM classes. I feel that having the ability to type mini letters or superscript/subscript would really help other students out there that are taking notes for chemistry, biology or any other STEM classes out there.

Being able to type Chemical Formulas of molecules/compounds would not only be more accurate but it’ll also be easier to locate them when refering back to ones notes.

I know this feature or ability is already on Google Docs but I prefer taking notes on here.

[andy2]

+1 to this feature, either separately or as part of LaTeX support.

[krssno]

I wouldn’t expect superscript and subscript as part of a LaTeX but as a standalone feature. I just want to write something usual as:

I expect nothing fancy, no entry in the style bar or such things. Just to make it possible somehow in an easy way

[andy2]

Interestingly, according to Markdown Guide, both subscript and superscript are part of the extended Markdown syntax, see here for details.

[krssno]

Actually that’s the most simple solution: superscripts text is embedded in ^ ... text ... ^ and subscripted in ~ ... text ... ~

[onkai]

I was looking for something like this. I’m not familiar with LaTeX, but if it could be included in that and LaTeX is added, that would be cool too.

I’m not looking for something complicated; I’m looking for something simple, just like how italizing is on the app.

[krssno]

@trix180 @Matteo @rexikan

I cannot remember that you ever have commented on the several requests for superscript and subscript. I would appreciate if you can say some words. I am aware that the benefit is limited to very few cases outside of chemical formulas and similar stuff. But if you need it, you’d be glad to have it.

Obsidian uses html-tags on the raw text which is compatible with GitHub flavored MD. Actually I don’t care about the raw text and would be satisfied using the single tilde for subscript and the caret for superscript at the level of input into the editor. At raw text level html-tags make sense for reasons of compatibility with Github and Obsidian

[crumbletop]

tilde ~ is used for underline. Carrot makes sense. In addition to chemical formulas subscript is used for other scientific or engineering notation such as Vhigh or Vlow (where high and low are both subscripts). This isn’t only used when writing a formula but is common within paragraphs or words in tables. Since Bear already visually supports superscript in the form of a footnote reference, perhaps it would not be too difficult to add the capability for non-footnote superscripts (and subscripts). My vote for subscript (since tilde is taken by underline) would be a double circumflex (carrot) ^^.

[krssno]

I don‘t use underline. I missed that. But yes, that‘s a point. However, any simple syntax would be fine for me.

[matteo]

At the moment, we don’t have plans to support superscript or subscript. That said, we’re actively exploring ways to introduce some form of math notation in the editor.

[crumbletop]

Math notation support is a better option, in my opinion.

[ffmich]

I agree that providing support for latex formulas (or similar) would be the best solution.

[that_jonasw]

This is so encouraging! Inline LaTeX via $ $ and block equations via $$ $$ are pretty standardises across a bunch of other notetaking apps and markdown editors there is a mature ecosystem of helper libraries for this (KaTeX/Mathjax, probably others) - this would be such a fantastic feature and would allow me to give up Obsidian for Bear for all of my studies and research.

Edit: I posted this right around the same time this was announced to be in beta