[Tex/LaTex] How to call unicode characters in LaTeX or LyX

Question

The only way I know to use Unicode characters in LaTeX involves another program such as Word.

I'll discuss an example, the inexact differential symbol đ. U+0111 is đ, so in Word typing 0111 followed by Alt-X returns đ. I can then copy đ into a .tex or .lyx document. However, if there's anything analogous to Word's Alt-X trick, at least in LyX (which I use), that would be convenient.

Answer 1

You could do this from the menus with LyX. Use:

Insert > Special Characters > Symbols,...

And get this pop-up window:

And input your symbol that way (like Word's ALT-I, if memory serves). You then can copy/paste if you want to keep using that symbol.

You can also use the "Evil Red Text" technique as noted by @AFeldman. If you use that approach, though, you will get the raw code in your LyX window, rather than the actual character (using đ = U+0111 = dec 273):

which produces:

I find it helpful to see the character! If you only use a few characters like this, you can create key bindings for them. Or if they appear in some national keyboard layout, you can also set these up as "languages" in LyX, and use the OS's keyboard driver for input.