Underline Superscript

When using a composite font in the Japanese version of FrameMaker 10, the underline was connected to one line as shown in the screenshot.
1. Create a composite font for regular text.
2. Create a composite font for superscripts.
3. Apply the composite font from 1. to the paragraph.
4. Apply the composite font from 2. to the superscript character format.
5. Apply underlining where necessary.

One fix (depending on the symbols that need a superscript underline) is to apply an OpenType font that has the required unicode. For example, I needed a superscript reg mark (®) underlined within a sentence, so I applied Benton Sans (Gotham also works) to that symbol and then highlighted the reg mark and selected the superscript option. There are likely other fonts that allow this. Hope that helps!

What works for me, is to take the special character, be it a superscript number or registered trademark for example, and select that one character, reduce its font size and do a baseline shift. Works pretty good since an underline styling is normally used in subheads and what not, so not that many instances to manually adjust.

You could tweak the spread of the superscript character and add an extra space to the right to get an underline that looks continuous. The following values work for Times New Roman (at any font size):

1) Superscript "m": no underline, superscript, spread -80%
2) Extra n space (type Esc, space, n): underline, no superscript, spread -35%
   
You'd have to make sure, however, that the extra space or formatting does not cause you any trouble elsewhere, e.g. in generated lists or cross-references.

Johannes

If you use FrameMaker’s “numeric underline” rather than simple underline you get the effect I think you’re looking for.

If you are using Unicode-supporting FrameMaker 8 or 9 and a font with the necessary glyphs, you can use the designated superscript characters, they are treated like regular characters for underline purposes (see image, the font is Minion Pro).

Working with subscripts is never easy, because they would look strike-through with most underlines.

Another option, if the underline applies to a full, single-line paragraph would be to use a Frame Below which contains the under-line.

And the last option I currently think of, would be to not use underlining at all. ;-)

- Michael

I don't think this is possible, because the underline is spaced at a fixed distance from the bottom of the character's bounding box, so if the character is superscripted the underline is also.

Sheila