Better looking nested subscripts and superscripts

Question

I have a situation where I need to subscript a superscript in math mode (and actually, subscript that subscript in some cases). (Please don't waste time telling me to change my notation; this is the notation used historically and I can't change it). I've noticed that LaTeX doesn't handle this very well, and it is very difficult to tell that the subscripted superscript is subordinate, particularly in the case of numbers like 1, 2, and 3. Is there a way to adjust this? I've tried

A^{a_{{}_1}}

which looks okay, but is far from ideal. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

You can change more or less anything without changing your markup, the font size and position of superscripts is all customisable with care.

You didn't say too much about what you didn't like about the default setting. This shows some possibilities using different font sizes or setting the fontdimen parameters to affect the script positioning.

\documentclass{article}
\textwidth3cm
\begin{document}

1\[
A^{a_{{}_1}}
\]


2\[
A^{a_1}
\]



3\[
A^{\textstyle a_1}
\]

4\[
A^{\textstyle a_{\scriptscriptstyle 1}}
\]




\fontdimen16\the\scriptfont2=5pt
5\[
A^{a_1}
\]



\end{document}