How-to use abbrev-mode to insert nice unicode characters

Étiquettes:

You are using emacs and you want to write text or code with nice little characters like: «♥∫♬‡☮✭∏ψ♻ℵ»? So this post is for you. The other 99.999% of the population can pass their way with no regret.

First learn a little bit about Abbrev in the emacs manual. Then download this file. At least edit the abbrev-table with M-x edit-abbrevs and insert the downloaded file, under the (global-abbrev-table) line.

That’s it! Now you can type in all the symbols presents on the following pages (thanks to their respective authors):

Each symbol is accessible with its name, following by an 0. So you can easily write alpha and α in the same phrase.

PS: Some characters are useless for me, because I can get them directly with my keyboard, configured as an international layout. I keep them because the file is generated automatically.