Superscripts made with weight axis?

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I have a rather complicated question/request that I’m not sure would be feasible, if not, that’s ok.

I’m somewhat of a novice at variable fonts and smart components, and I would like to be able to make superscript/subscript characters using the weight axis to get them the right amount of thickness to look nice as superscripts/subscripts.

Thing is, since the usual weight axis cannot be used as a smart component axis, I would need to make two identical bold versions of each character–one for the regular weight axis (as I do still want to be able to have a regular weight axis), and one for the smart axis. Since there’s no way to “sync” these two axes (such as having one be used as a component directly into the other with Auto Attach), I need to just manually make them identical, which wastes both effort and filesize, and I’d have to change both of them if I wanted to change the bold glyph.

This is really complicated to explain but what I’d like to be able to do is define, say, ᴬ, as the A glyph with its weight axis set to about 60% of the way from regular to bold, with anchors and bearings intact, but shrunken down to about 62.5% of its size and raised up, and it would live update if I changed either the regular or bold of the A glyph. Ideally, I’d like the anchors to auto-update too, but since it would be shrunken, I don’t think it would be possible to keep an Auto Attach on it. Which should be okay, I may be able to live without the anchors auto updating, the main issue is I don’t want to have to make two duplicate heavy-weight A layers that are completely unattached from each other. I’d also like the character 𝐀 (mathematical bold capital A) to be synced with the bold master of regular A.

Again, I’m not sure if there’s a feasible way to implement something like this, or even if other font softwares have anything like it. If not that should be okay, but I hope I was able to explain what I want without it being too confusing, feel free to ask me questions if you need me to clear anything up.

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Thank you, your explanation is clear.

Before going into Smart Components, I suggest you first look at Tools > Glyph Transformer. FontCreator includes a script named Superscript.xml, which creates superscript figures by scaling the original figures and applying a bold transformation.

That script is useful because it shows the basic workflow:

  1. start with the original glyph;
  2. scale it down;
  3. move it up;
  4. compensate the weight, so it does not become too light.

For many fonts this can give a good first result, especially for figures. For letters, and also for high-quality superscript/subscript glyphs, you will usually still want to review and adjust the outlines, spacing, and vertical position manually. Simply scaling and emboldening the normal glyph does not always look right.

Smart Components can still help reduce duplication. For example, you can add a smart axis to A and use A as a Smart Component inside ᴬ, then scale and position it. That keeps the glyph linked to the source design, while still allowing you to make further corrections where needed.

For mathematical bold characters such as 𝐀, a component-based approach is more straightforward, because it only needs to follow the bold design and does not also need to be reduced in size.

So my advice would be: first try the Glyph Transformer superscript script to understand the transformation, then decide where Smart Components make sense to keep related glyphs easier to maintain.