Best way to insert Degree symbol?

Question

Hello,
I have an inspection form set up for restaurant/health inspectors.    Often times during an inspection they need to enter temperatures of food and like to use the degree symbol.    They're running this form on a convertible tablet pc, so a normal keyboard is not available to them in tablet mode and when in laptop mode using the combination of ALT+0176 that's still a PITA because the keyboard doesn't have full number pad and the people using this form aren't the most computer literate people out there to be able to activate the Function keys to endable number pad keys and then enter an ASCII code many times during an inspection.
I was looking for suggestion on how to inforporate something into the form to assist in entering the degree symbol in any text field they are in at the position of the cursor.
The idea's I've though of are:
1.) A command button that inserts the symbol, but I'm afraid clicking the button would lose focus of the destination field and there'd need to be a lot of scripting to remember which field was the last one they were in to insert it in the correct one.
2.) A Button or On Load event which somehow inserts the degree symbol into the Windows clipboard, but during the course of an inspection they might copy and paste something else thus clearing it out.
3.) Some kind of auto-replace of text.  Not sure if that's possible in an adobe form.  E.g. if they type 'deg.' have the form auto replace it to '°'.
4.) A special key press.  Not sure if Adobe can listen to a special key sequence not used by Adobe and Windows, say CTRL + D which when pressed inserts a degree symbol in the current location.  
5.) Any way to place a special icon on Adobe's tool bar to insert the degree symbol at the currently location?
Those were some ideas I'm thinking of.  Many are probably dead ends.   If you had this problem, how would you approach it?
Thanks!
-Mike

Answer 1

Magnus, thanks for not giving up on this yet.   In your last post that is making some progress, but there's also some con's too.
1.) That's running off of an 'On Exit' even which inserts the ºF at the end of the text.   In some cases that would work, but it others it would not work, like in this text field example of real data:      "White fish was a 51°F.  *Corrected* Witnessed manager throw away fish."    
With your proposed java, that would put the °F at the end of the line when it needs to be in the middle of the line.
2.) Many types of written text can be put in these fields.  Not every scenario would involve a temperature, so having it pop up your popupmenu might get in their way when it is not needed.
What I'm thinking needs to be done is to somehow insert the °F exactly wherever the cursor is at the time when it is triggered to do so (how to trigger it?).   
OR  
On an On Exit event searcingh for and replacing the text they have entered.   Perhaps replace ' deg' with '°F' so that if they type:
      "White fish was a 51 deg.  *Corrected* Witnessed manager throw away fish."
When the On Exit fires it replace deg with °F so that the text field now reads:
      "White fish was a 51°F.  *Corrected* Witnessed manager throw away fish."