Inserting Unicode Combining Characters (and any other Unicode)

[polyphenol]

This might be well-known - I did have a look through posting history but didn't find it.

I wanted a special character (for the purposes of this post, assume A inside a circle) but, while I knew that Unicode has combining characters, had no idea how to achieve this.

After a bit of searching and finding some truly complex and confusing approaches to this, I opened Pages, typed A.

Then opened up Character Viewer, typed in the Unicode hex 20dd, and clicked on the character image. And got my A⃝. !
(Have pasted it here - looks OK as I am typing but who knows by the time it has posted - posted as graphic below)!)

Played about for a while - new toys and all that - seems to work just fine with several different combining characters.

Feel free to tell me that I'm doing it the long way, or "Doesn't everyone know that?". I'd be interested in other approaches. I'm just chuffed that I got the result.

 

[polyphenol]

Just double-checked, this way of entering Unicode also works with five character Unicode sequences. Like 10001 - Linear B B038 E.

𐀁

Ah! You can also just type "combining" to see all combining characters, or the Unicode official character name.

But it does NOT work if you are typing in Word. You can do the same but characters do not combine as they should.

 

[polyphenol]

This might be well-known - I did have a look through posting history but didn't find it.

I wanted a special character (for the purposes of this post, assume A inside a circle) but, while I knew that Unicode has combining characters, had no idea how to achieve this.

After a bit of searching and finding some truly complex and confusing approaches to this, I opened Pages, typed A.

Then opened up Character Viewer, typed in the Unicode hex 20dd, and clicked on the character image. And got my A⃝. !
(Have pasted it here - looks OK as I am typing but who knows by the time it has posted - posted as graphic below)!)

Played about for a while - new toys and all that - seems to work just fine with several different combining characters.

Feel free to tell me that I'm doing it the long way, or "Doesn't everyone know that?". I'd be interested in other approaches. I'm just chuffed that I got the result.
View attachment 2314464

Yesterday I was able to check - this was not a feature of Ventura.

Anyone confirm whether it was in Monterey?