How can the symbol and non-English diacritical marking, etc accessed with combinations of letters and functional keys prior to Snow Leopard be achieved in Snow Leopard?

Question

How can the symbol and non-English diacritical marking/punctuation pallet, available in pre-Snow Leopard OSes with various combinations of letter or number keys and functional keys, be accessed in Snow Leopard?  Those pre-Snow Leopard versions worked on the fly as one was making text in any pedestrian application and its native font (Mail, Text Edit, for example).  One didn't need to dig around in font libraries, change font preferences, etc.

Answer 1

> One didn't need to dig around in font libraries, change font
> preferences, etc.
It hasn't worked like that since the Early Chalcolithic (ie, System 7 or thereabouts).
You've already got plenty of answers. Briefly (and grossly oversimplified),
- Mac OS X conforms to a standard known as Unicode; in its current incarnation, it defines over 100k characters.
- A keypress is translated into a character according to the current keyboard layout.
- The graphic representation of a character (ie, glyph), is provided by the current font.
- If a font lacks a glyph for the requested character, either another font will be automatically chosen (Mac OS X text engine), or some form of feedback (empty box, question mark, etc) will be used.
- To inspect the actual key codes, use a utility such as Key Codes.
- To inspect the current keyboard layout, invoke Keyboard Viewer.
- To inspect the full complement of glyphs of a font, invoke Character Viewer (also accessed with the Special Characters command).
(Remember that both these utilities are resizable and zoomable -- you can enlarge them to a comfortable viewing size, then zoom out to see more of the screen for your original task.)
- For a more detailed look, use a utility such as UnicodeChecker.
- The default keyboard layout depends on your Mac OS X localisation.
(Keep in mind that there's no need to stick with the default layout; choose whichever one makes sense to you, given your language, habits, and proclivities. Mac OS X comes bundled with quite a few, including some obviously designed for the huddled masses of refugees from the Dark Side, who, in their wretched ignorance, have the unmitigated gall of labelling our native ways "really uncomfortable". Oh well, this, too, shall pass.
If none of the supplied keyboard layouts fits your needs -- if, for instance, you write your emails in Etruscan -- go out on the 'net, you'll find quite a few. Or write your own with Ukulele, it's not really all that difficult.)
- Use Keyboard Viewer to familiarise yourself with the current layout and to enter the odd character; but, to be proficient, you should learn your layout to the point that KV is no longer needed.
- Use Character Viewer to enter the odd character not available in the current keyboard layout.
Neither Keyboard Viewer nor Character Viewer are effective tools for more extensive needs, eg, for writing and editing bilingual or multilingual texts. In such a case, you should enable the respective keyboard layouts and switch between them with a keyboard shortcut.
A few interesting layouts bundled with Mac OS X have already been mentioned. Let me add three.
- Dvorak: several layouts based on the Dvorak keyboard. It is claimed that the latter is more productive and lessens RSI risk.
- US Extended: based on QWERTY, it offers a more extensive set of diacritics (eg, caron, breve) via dead keys.
- Unicode Hex Input: also based QWERTY, it allows input by Unicode codepoint (in hexadecimal), so it's the most extensive layout of all; eg, to enter the character "Parenthesized Number Twelve" (U+247F), hold down Option, type "247f", release Option.