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Comment by ufo | Hacker News Reader

On Linux I input special characters using the Compose key. Works everywhere, not just in Vim.

Came here to mention this exactly. I have a quick intro to the compose key on my website [0] and an intro for how to use Unicode with Latex[1], and there are other resources around the web if you are looking. The idea of a compose key for Unicode originated in Plan 9, as far as I know.

[0]: https://hakon.gylterud.net/tutorials/unicode.html

[1]: https://hakon.gylterud.net/tutorials/latex-maths-unicode.htm...

I do this, too.

I haven't yet found a solution that works very well for macOS— a few years ago, some mappings were not possible with the solutions I found.

control-command spacebar brings up the emoji picker, and some of the symbols are in there, but like you said, not everything.

∀ ° ∫ Ω

I do really like modern emoji pickers in general. Compose keys are nice, but I love fuzzy filter interfaces that search as you type. Compared to compose sequences, they let you get up to a reasonable speed very quickly.

I got you covered: https://michaelgoerz.net/notes/the-us-international-scientif...

Windows really needs X11 compose key sequences. Yes, I use Linux, but also Windows.

WinCompose offers this. I find it slightly buggy with caps as compose, but it works well enough and it can read an XCompose config file. (It does not honor XCompose includes IIRC, you have to merge everything into one file.)

https://github.com/samhocevar/wincompose

I’ve previously used a nice little tool called WinCompose for exactly that. Looks like it’s still going:

http://wincompose.info/

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