[feature request] Exponent notation also in e-mode, not only power mode

[rlalik]

Would be great to have possibility to display exponent in e-notation, like 4.15e-15 eV s. Currently option exponent-mode has values: input,fixed,engineering,scientific,threshold and each of them (beside fixed I think) could be displayed with e-mode, so I wouldn't add e-mode there. One could add exponent-e-mode option of bolean type (default: false) to change from power to e-mode.

Reasoning: sometimes one to display numbers which can be easily copy-paste to number processing tools, like spreadsheet, programming code, data files. Power mode doesn't work here great.

[josephwright]

See option output-exponent-marker

[rlalik]

Thanks! I was searching through the documentation for this and couldn't find. But, when having that, the minus sign is not ASCII minus but I think n-dash? As an example, if I type directly 9.171e-03 into the table I get:

9.171e-03

and this is when formatted with S[table-format=1.3e1,output-exponent-marker=\mathrm{e}]

9.171e−3

The first one can copy-past into spreadsheet and is read as a number, the second one as a text.

And I think the point of e-notation is to represent data in the ASCII format consumable by computers, and not visual way like the math mode of LaTeX. Do you think this could be changed?

[josephwright]

@rlalik siunitx is meant for typesetting units, and there it's quite clear that the correct symbol is a minus sign not a hyphen. If you are taking 'bulk' raw data to present in a machine-readable form, I'd be tempted to use verbatim or similar (That's what I do for supplementary data in publications).