Have you noticed that Unicode Hexadecimal Input does not work if the UCS/Unicode four-digit hexadecimal code point number begins and ends with a zero, and what is done about it?

Thank you for the alternatives, but the important thing is to make Apple Inc fix this error. This is probably what has happened:

1) Between Monterey 12.3 and 12.4, Apple Inc made a mistake and introduced an error in macOS. Not allowing characters with UCS/Unicode code point numbers U+0xx0 is obviously not something that is necessary; it is only an error in macOS.

2) Not enough people have complained about this error, so it has been carried through to Ventura 12.3.1.

I’ve been talking to Apple Support since June 2022. They have run tests and established that it is an error in macOS. Of course, Apple Support cannot do anything about macOS. They have only said things such as “wait for the next update” and ”write on apple.com/feedback/”, which I have done. But Product Feedback do not respond to customers unless they want to, and Product Feedback does not give the customer a case number. The only way to resolve this to make people inside Apple point out to those responsible for macOS that they have introduced a preventable error into macOS. I am finally succeeding in making Apple Support take this seriously.

If more people start talking to Apple Inc, maybe we can get this fixed. I think the problem is that many people have not advanced past primary school literacy; they know the alphabet and a few common characters, and they think of other characters as “special characters”. They don’t understand that the whole world now has the same ”alphabet”, which is UCS/Unicode. ”Literacy for adults”, as I call it, is to memorise and use code point numbers for everything except most (not all) of the characters on an English keyboard. I am Swedish, but I don’t have åäö on the keyboard I use now, I write 00E5 00E4 00F6 to get åäö. And I write 201C for “ LEFT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK, because conventions for quotation marks are different in different languages I write.

I use approximately 50 of the affected characters; here are some important ones:

GRAVE ACCENT U+0060

DEGREE SIGN U+00B0

LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH GRAVE U+00C0

LATIN CAPITAL LETTER ETH U+00D0

LATIN SMALL LETTER A WITH GRAVE U+00E0

LATIN SMALL LETTER ETH U+00F0

LATIN CAPITAL LETTER A WITH MACRON U+0100

LATIN CAPITAL LETTER G WITH DOT ABOVE U+0120

LATIN CAPITAL LETTER O WITH DOUBLE ACUTE U+0150

LATIN CAPITAL LETTER S WITH CARON U+0160

LATIN SMALL LETTER B WITH STROKE U+0180

LATIN CAPITAL LETTER N WITH LONG RIGHT LEG U+0220

LATIN SMALL LETTER TURNED A U+0250

LATIN SMALL LETTER TURNED M WITH LONG LEG U+0270

LATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL R U+0280

LATIN SMALL LETTER Z WITH RETROFLEX HOOK U+0290

MODIFIER LETTER SMALL H U+02B0

MODIFIER LETTER GLOTTAL STOP U+02C0

MODIFIER LETTER TRIANGULAR COLON U+02D0

MODIFIER LETTER SMALL GAMMA U+02E0

COMBINING GRAVE ACCENT U+0300

COMBINING GRAVE TONE MARK U+0340

plus Greek and Cyrillic.

Tom Gewecke, thanks for moral support and advice. For the time being, I wonder if there is anything better than the following.

Assume that I want to write “Valgerður Benediktsdóttir”. I write “Valger ur Benediktsd ttir” with the keyboard; I write “ó” with Option+00F3, and “ð” I write by opening Character Viewer and click on ð in the table, because ð has the affected code point number 00F0.

When I write in the International Phonetic alphabet, and often need MODIFIER LETTER TRIANGULAR COLON U+02D0, I simply keep that character copied and write Command+V when i need it.

etresoft wrote:

… the hex input method. It’s been broken for years. It isn’t going to be fixed.

etresoft, I wrote in an earlier reply that the problem started for me with Monterey 12.4.

When I think about it, I probably jumped to Monterey 12.4 from a much earlier version. The problem is older, according to threads I just looked at.

So it seems like you are right that it’s been broken for years.

Thanks. I imported your .plist file.

In TextEdit I get it to work. But I had to press the space bar (or write a HYPEN‐MINUS U+002D), which means I get a SPACE (or HYPHEN‐MINUS) after. Same thing happens in this window where I write this reply. If i write 00B0x many times (I added an x to stop the substitution) I have to press the space bar, which means I have to insert spaces like this: ° ° ° . If I want to write °°°, I have to delete the space every time. I never want to write °°°, but I’m demonstrating that there is an extra key to press (the Delete key) every time I have written one of these 0xx0 characters. But your suggested method is still very good.

However, I could not make it work in Microsoft Word for Mac.

You are, as an unpaid volunteer, providing the support Apple Inc. and Apple Support are unwilling and unable to provide. Thank you.

Tom Gewecke wrote:

MS Word has its own list of substitutions

Yes, I knew that, but it was very late in Canberra (early morning) and I didn’t try. Now when I do this I have found a problem. I have made the rule that 0 2D0 should become ː MODIFIER LETTER TRIANGULAR COLON (I inserted a space in 0 2D0 between the zero and the 2 to stop the rule from being implemented as I type here). The problem is that there needs to be a space before 02D 0 (I did same trick with space). If i want to write a word in phonetic transcription, like this: [eːr], I must first write [e ː and then go back and change to [eː and then finish it so I get [eːr].

To avoid the extra space try pressing down arrow and return instead.

That didn’t work when I tried.