Jude DaShiell <jdashiel@shellworld.net> writes:

Hi Jude:

> Something is undocumented and broken.  Attempting to create the table 
> documented in section 3.1 of the manual generates a beep and the message:
> Symbol's value as variable is void: org-use-sub-superscripts
> at the bottom of the screen and hitting tab just tells me I'm at the 
> beginning of the buffer after that operation.  After I keyed in the 
> example I tried c-c c-ret because writing a second line and putting |- on 
> it caused the same problem to happen.

Something is very wrong with your installation- the example works fine
here. It seems like your org.el is not loaded properly since
"org-use-sub-superscripts" is defined there:

,----[ Output of C-h v org-use-sub-superscripts]
| org-use-sub-superscripts is a variable defined in `org.el'.
| Its value is t
| 
| Documentation:
| Non-nil means interpret "_" and "^" for export.
| When this option is turned on, you can use TeX-like syntax for sub- and
| superscripts.  Several characters after "_" or "^" will be
| considered as a single item - so grouping with {} is normally not
| needed.  For example, the following things will be parsed as single
| sub- or superscripts.
| 
|  10^24   or   10^tau     several digits will be considered 1 item.
|  10^-12  or   10^-tau    a leading sign with digits or a word
|  x^2-y^3                 will be read as x^2 - y^3, because items are
| 			 terminated by almost any nonword/nondigit char.
|  x_{i^2} or   x^(2-i)    braces or parenthesis do grouping.
| 
| Still, ambiguity is possible - so when in doubt use {} to enclose the
| sub/superscript.  If you set this variable to the symbol `{}',
| the braces are *required* in order to trigger interpretations as
| sub/superscript.  This can be helpful in documents that need "_"
| frequently in plain text.
| 
| Not all export backends support this, but HTML does.
| 
| This option can also be set with the #+OPTIONS line, e.g. "^:nil".
| 
| You can customize this variable.
| 
| This variable was introduced, or its default value was changed, in
| version 24.1 of Emacs.
`----

Cheers,
Charles

-- 
"All language designers are arrogant.  Goes with the territory..."
(By Larry Wall)