I don't see how this is a bug? Yes, it's bad, in the same way that setting text's colour to be white, or putting an image inside another image's caption, but that doesn't mean we should stop people doing it…

Generally, appropriate use of the software is a social thing, not a software thing. Willing to be convinced otherwise, but for now I'll mark this as a WONTFIX.

Do other text editors permit that? I don't know of any that would.

(Or in other words, this is not fitting users' expectations.)

(In reply to comment #2)

Do other text editors permit that? I don't know of any that would.

(Or in other words, this is not fitting users' expectations.)

Well, HTML lets you do this, which means VE needs to support it on the input side at the very least.

As input, sure. But as output, HTML lets you do lots of things that VE doesn't.

• Bug 56795 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

A dupe was just filed, this is not just me. Reopening.

Wikitext lets you do this too. Do you think we should just silently kill all examples of this in the database? :-)

Closing again unless you can suggest (a) what should happen in VE when the user attempts this, (b) what should happen in VE when the page already has this, and (c) what should be changed in MediaWiki's PST to stop this happening in future(?).

(In reply to James Forrester from comment #8)

(a) what should happen in VE when the user attempts this

Text should be either super- or subscripted, not both.

Nesting superscripts in subscripts, subscripts in superscripts,
subscripts in subscripts and superscripts in superscripts
should be impossible, just like it's impossible to nest links in other
links. Currently only the last two are impossible.

(b) what should happen in VE when the page already has this

The same thing that happens with all other unsupported input: it
should be alienated and left alone.

(c) what should be changed in MediaWiki's PST to stop this happening
in future(?).

Nothing. I suppose there are very rare use cases where this could be
wanted, we should just keep supporting them for backwards-compatibility.

In fact, the only things that I see in existing articles are currently
impossible in VE – you can't nest superscripts to produce, say,
10^10²⁶ (10^{10^26}) used in [[pl:Oś czasu dalekiej
przyszłości]]. Arguably this should just use <math/> tags though.

I agree that the sub/superscript tool should clear any other sub/superscript annotations present. As pointed out you can't do a double superscript, so clearly our goal is not to let you create any complex hierarchy you want, that's for <math>.

I don't think we need to alienate such nested content though, in the same way we don't alienate a double bold tag (if someone used one). As long as the user doesn't try to change the sub/superscripting, the annotations will remain untouched.

(In reply to Ed Sanders from comment #10)

I don't think we need to alienate such nested content though, in the same
way we don't alienate a double bold tag (if someone used one). As long as
the user doesn't try to change the sub/superscripting, the annotations will
remain untouched.

I'm willing to trust you on implementation details :)

Change 114488 had a related patch set uploaded by Esanders:
Allow annotations to remove other annotations

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/114488

(In reply to Bartosz Dziewoński from comment #9)

(In reply to James Forrester from comment #8)

(a) what should happen in VE when the user attempts this

Text should be either super- or subscripted, not both.

Nesting superscripts in subscripts, subscripts in superscripts,
subscripts in subscripts and superscripts in superscripts
should be impossible, just like it's impossible to nest links in other
links. Currently only the last two are impossible.

This works for me. Re-wording bug for clarity – is this acceptable to you?

Yeah, that's what I meant. Thanks.

Change 114488 merged by jenkins-bot:
Allow annotations to remove other annotations

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/114488

Verified the fix in betalabs

This is happening again, the superscript and subscript both are getting applied at the same time.

I can't reproduce. Steps?

Change 143756 had a related patch set uploaded by Catrope:
Follow-up: If717ef98 – Re-add subscript and superscript removes to DM nodes

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/143756

Change 143756 merged by jenkins-bot:
Follow-up: If717ef98 – Re-add subscript and superscript removes to DM nodes

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/143756

Verified the fix in production

Let's leave the bug as fixed in the original fix, not the recent minor breakage.