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I'm aware of the ability to use accented characters by holding down a key until they appear (ie. á ü etc.); however, I'm curious as to how, if possible, one might enter a code point in hexadecimal format or otherwise to output the corresponding character?

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Dori, I see that you closed this as an exact duplicate, when in fact the question is more specific than simply entering symbols, rather my question has to do with the ability to input Unicode characters without the assistance of some other app. For example, the Mac OS allows a user to type ALT + 4-digit-hex if the keyboard is set to "Unicode Hex Input". Would you please reopen it since an answer might address multilingual concerns not limited copy/paste symbols? Thank you! – mkelley33 Jan 11 '11 at 19:12
@Kyle Cronin: Just out of curiosity, and hopefully to learn something new, what does "ID number" refer to in the title edit, and how is it related to the terminology "code point"? Thanks for reopening! – mkelley33 Jan 12 '11 at 17:48
@mkelly33 I wasn't sure what it was called - if you think code point is better I can change it – Kyle Cronin♦ Jan 12 '11 at 17:59
A "code point" aka "code position" are just the technical terms used by unicode.org unicode.org/glossary Basically its the same thing as a unique ID, but specifically integer. The most common encoding I've worked with represents code points in hexidecimal. – mkelley33 Jan 18 '11 at 16:46
@Kyle Cronin: Technical terms here might yield a better answer. So would you mind changing the words "by ID" in the question to "using a code point"? You'll see much written about Unicode being misunderstood in the computing world, and I'd like to be careful not to spread any misinformation or introduce ambiguous terminology in an already complex subject! Thank you :) – mkelley33 Mar 3 '11 at 1:30
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migrated from superuser.com Jan 10 '11 at 16:58

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There are applications in the App Store that display all of the characters allowed in the Unicode set that you can copy and paste into other applications like Mail and the like. Searching "unicode" in the App Store brings up a whole slew of them, both free and paid.

There is also Glyphboard (visit with your iOS device) that you can save as a bookmark on your iOS device for an easy interface to some of the more popular ones. This is very lightweight and changes every so often.

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Thanks for the suggestion, but I'm hoping there's a different, perhaps more technical way to natively enter via some keyboard combination a hexadecimal or some such format to output characters in the basic multilingual plane, and perhaps in the Unicode code space beyond. – mkelley33 Jan 18 '11 at 16:50
Natively—meaning direct iOS support—for the full Unicode set in the keyboard doesn't exist. All solutions will be third party, and given there are so many of them, there is bound to be one that does what you want it to do. – Philip Regan Jan 18 '11 at 19:34
Thanks for the comment Phillip. Where is it documented that "full Unicode set in the keyboard doesn't exist"? How did you arrive at this conclusion? Much appreciated! – mkelley33 Jan 29 '11 at 19:38
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I don't of any publicly available, but in the documentation available to developers there are lists of keyboards available. There are a lot of language-specific keyboards that include characters in the Unicode set, but there is not a keyboard that is simply the Unicode set. – Philip Regan Jan 29 '11 at 22:47
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I swear I saw this at one point, but I didn't link to it and finding it again is appearing to be a difficult task. Sorry. – Philip Regan Jan 30 '11 at 0:13
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I have been looking for similar and the best third arty app I've found for arbitrary unicode inout is acalled UnicodeLab.

It allows you to input any unicode in decimal or hex, view it in multiple fonts, copy to clipboard. You can also cycle thorugh neighboring character codes easily.

It is free.

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A very cool app indeed, but I'm seeking a way to input Unicode character using the ALT + 4-digit-hex if the keyboard is set to "Unicode Hex Input". Thank you for the suggestion! – mkelley33 Apr 4 '11 at 1:55

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