darthoctopus parent
As an intermediate alternative between a hardware keyboard and a graphical symbol picker, I use an .XCompose file with contents that look like this:
I've used this for perhaps the last 10 years now and I don't think I could go back to working on a machine without configurable compose key functionality at this point.
This. Using a Compose key [0] covers a vast range of input use cases and is eminently customizable. For Windows there is WinCompose [1]. For macOS there is [2].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compose_key
Compose functionality is absolutely awesome. I don't understand why it's not more widespread. I use it for all sorts of stuff, from emojis, to symbols, to diacretics. It's great!