AZERTY

frees up all the keys in the numeric row to be numbers

I don’t think the French are psychologically prepared for that.

There have been many French mathematicians so it can’t be fear of numbers.

…and an entire key dedicated to a superscript ‘2’ (does anybody ever use this?),

Oh there are times I do stuff that has a superscript 2 ² so it does have some uses in text. Maybe regularly if you model yourself on Terry Pratchett.¹

² An out of sequence footnote :)

Some footnotes have footnotes

I’ve done that. And recursive footnotes that point to each other.

That said, the formatter would likely handle the footnote stuff yourself, so you have ^{1 2 3} and write it normally and let Textile (in this instance) mess it up.

¹ Here’s the first.

² Here’s the second.

³ Here’s the fourth. Haha, fooled you.⁴

⁴ Not.

So… Unless you’re going to develop a weird personality quirk and only write footnotes numbered 2 (or 22, or 222, etc), I really completely and utterly can’t justify devoting an entire key to ‘²’.

(^_^)

So… Unless you’re going to develop a weird personality quirk

“Going to develop…” Hmmm. Thanks, most people say that in the past tense. :)

and only write footnotes numbered 2 (or 22, or 222, etc),

So the obsessive compulsive stuff is out then.