Would an idiot’s guide on how to type tables, exponents, various scripts etc etc help more people than me?  Everyone could contribute and we could all learn something from it.

Sounds like a good idea to me.

Yes, I also need to know how to do exponents or non-Latin characters.

The only workable method I am aware of is the same for both categories: Unicode.  Since the <sub> and <super> commands don’t work here, I instead use Unicode characters for superscript and subscript numbers.
For superscripts, the hexadecimal values are
⁰ 2070
¹ 00B9
² 00B2
³ 00B3
⁴ 2074
for ⁵ through ⁹, the values are 2070+n, as for ⁰ and ⁴ (i.e., 2075-2079).  You can see the effects of Unicode’s piecemeal development here.

For subscripts, it is more logical.  Subscripts ₀ through ₉ have the hex values 2080 - 2089, sequentially.

However, the generic HTML method of entering Unicode characters by their numeric values doesn’t appear to work here, and the method you would have to use for inserting Unicode characters depends on your operating system and version (which will also affect the selection of Unicode characters that your system can display).  In recent versions of Mac OSX it’s most easily done with the Character Palette, but I suspect that won’t be of much use to most users here.  I suggest reading your computer’s local help files and web-based documentation for information about using Unicode.

Thank you.  Maybe this could be the thread, then.

Tables, anyone?

Doing a quick test of funny characters:

Accented áéíóú àèìòù âêîôû äëïöü (entered using UK Extended keyboard layout in Windows)

Other random characters ÆĄĐߍ€∫ (entered using Windows Character Map)

Unicode &#x00e0; (entered as hex - doesn’t work)

Unicode àáâãä (entered as decimal - works)

Named HTML characters αβγδε (entered as &alpha; and so on)

Superscripts ¹²³ (entered as &sup1; and so on)

Superscripts ⁰¹²³⁴ (entered as decimal unicode)

Mathematical symbols ∀∂∃∅∇∈ (entered as &forall; and so on)

For Windows PCs, it looks like you can get most characters using the built-in character map (not installed by default, but usually easily added). Beyond that, if you know the HTML 4 character name, you can use that and failing all else, you can use unicode, but it has to be in decimal not hex.

dr. techie and dr. fortran you guys have shared really helpful information. thank you for that.