Unicode in Photoshop CS3 - is it possible ?

Question

Hi. How can i use unicode characters within a Photoshop CS3 text layer? An example: In Word, i can type
261A
followed by
[Alt-key] C
then i see an unicode character in Word (the left-pointing hand).
This does not work in Photoshop. I also cannot copy-paste the unicode character from Word to Photoshop.
What i can do of course:
- do a screenshot of the character
- print the character to PDF and import it hi-res to Photoshop
But is it not possible to type in unicode directly. On the net, i didnt find a compact solution.
Is there a way to insert unicode smoothly to a PS text layer?
Btw, Id like unicode not so much for foreign languages, more for symbols (I know there are symbol font sets like Dingbats that don't require unicode). To look up unicode, i use decodeunicode.org and unicode.org. What else do you recommend to find interesting unicode symbols, web sites or freeware (for Windows)?
Thanks!

Answer 1

In Photoshop...Use Zapf Dingbats, or whichever font you need that contains the extended character you want to display. It's just the quickest and easiest way to get them into a Photoshop layout.
Using the Glyph Palette (panel) will make your choices handy.
Why do it this way? Photoshop doesn't have a built-in parser to convert code so that it will display as characters.
Online, use unicode or character entities coding. You already know how to do that.