I added the bordered buttons to the koffice tool bar -- they look worse. I think we need new super/sub buttons, but it will take entire new buttons. For now, the current ones work, we will just leave them until we have a better replacement. I just think the 1/2 'A' causes people to look and think "that doesn't look right -- what is it? Oh, it's superscript/subscript..."
We'll put this on the back burner...
Try something simple, like this:
http://humanreadable.nfshost.com/trinity/patches/super-sub-script.png
Change the 1/2 "A" to a full lower case "a" and add the respective sub/super script. No arrows, no cursor icon.
Darrell