QML: superscript/subscript text

Question

The problem is that QML totally ignores <sub> and <sup> html tags, that are actually mentioned in official Supported HTML Subset.
So the following code will display regular "xy" insted of "x^y":

Text {
text: "x<sup>y</sup>"
}

Is there any another possible way to display subscript/superscript text?

UPD: this is a known bug for newest Qt Quick versions since Qt 5.0. You can help getting the bug fixed by voting for it here or here

Answer 1

I added textFormat: Text.RichText to get sub and sup to work properly:

Text {
    textFormat: Text.RichText
    text: "Normal<sub> Subscript</sub> <sup>Superscript</<sup>"
}

Answer 2

Since this seems to be a Qt bug, you need a workaround if you want this to work now. As it happens, I was inspired to play with Canvas element (which is basically HTML5 canvas element, some documentation for example here). By taking the hard-coded values from QML properties, the snippet below could be easily expanded to a simple configurable special-purpose text element.

Canvas {
    anchors.fill: parent
    onPaint: {
        var basetext = 'x';
        var suptext = 'y';

        var ctx = this.getContext("2d");

        ctx.strokeStyle = "blue";
        ctx.fillStyle = "red";

        ctx.font = 'bold 20px serif';
        ctx.strokeText(basetext, 20, 30);

        var metrics = ctx.measureText(basetext);
        console.debug('basetext width:', metrics.width);

        ctx.font = 'italic 12px serif';
        ctx.fillText(suptext, 20+metrics.width, 20);
    }
}

Note: when playing around with code like this, it pays to pay attention to the console output, for stuff like warnings about invalid font.