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The number of characters in Unicode 4 exceeds 100,000, from Aegean Numbers to Zapf Dingbats. When you require one of the more esoteric characters, there are simply no keyboard shortcuts for the vast majority of these characters. To get around that, you can key in the unicode characters, for example 2F25 to produce the ideogram shown at right.
To enable OS X's Unicode capabilities, do this:
1. Apple Menu, System Preferences, select International. The International pane is shown below in Figure 1.
2. Click on the Input Menu button, then scroll down almost to the bottom and click on Unicode Hex Input. Also, to make your life easier, at the bottom of the international pane, turn on the option Show input menu in menu bar. This will place an icon in the system menu bar indicating which keyboard layout or input method you have selected; and you can click on that icon to switch among those which you have enabled in the International pane.
3. To enter a Unicode character into a document, ensure the Unicode Hex Input is active(see Figure 2), hold down the option key and type the 4 hex character Unicode.
Additional notes:
1. Not all applications support Unicode. If Unicode is active and you switch to an application which does not support it, the input method will revert to one that is supported.
2. Determining the 4 hex character unicode: If you don't have a cheat-sheet, you'll probably want one. Mine is shown here. To get started in finding your first unicode in the hundred thousand or so, it's easy because they are very well organized. A good place to start is the Code Charts at http://www.unicode.org/charts/. The Code Charts are grouped into easy to navigate sets such as Hebrew, Mathematical Operators, Cyrillic, etc. A more granular (and hence larger set is the Unicode Character Name Index, at http://www.unicode.org/charts/charindex.html.
3. For additional information, I have a set of Unicode resources listed here.
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