The Character Palette in Mac OS X is a very cool font viewer and character selector -- sort of like KeyCaps on steroids (see Figure 1).

Unfortunately, for some reason Apple made it very hard to get to initially. After you "install" it, it shows up in the menu bar of every non-Classic application (see Figure 2).

Here's how to activate the Character Palette on your system: Choose System Preferences from the Apple menu (or the Dock), then click on the "International" preference (see Figure 3). In this window, click the "Input Menu" tab. You'll see a list of every possible input method installed in your system. Click the checkbox for "Character Palette" and you should see a little flag appear in the menu bar; in my system, it's a U.S. flag, but it depends on your primary language. That's it; you can quit System Preferences, and from then on the Character Palette menu will be in your menu bar.

I've also checked the "Unicode Hex Input" checkbox, which allows me to enter any Unicode character directly from the keyboard. More on the this, and on hidden features of the Character Palette, in my next article.

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