I’m having trouble arranging my thoughts into something more dialogic, so I’ll just try to list them: The keyboard mapping I use, which is more-or-less a clone of the standard US Apple keyboard, covers most European languages that use the Latin script and provides many common symbols, such as “®”. Of course, different mappings provide different character sets. Because keyboard mappings can be quickly swapped out with a couple of keystrokes (this can be done with any OS), users that work in multiple languages can simply switch to a mapping that supports the language they are currently writing. Advanced input methods, like the phonetic approach used for CJK characters, lets users access complex scripts with a common keyboard. Some text editors and input support software let a user type a LaTeX symbol command and have the control sequence be replaced with the Unicode character(s). The way I interpret all of this is that written words in different languages are pretty well covered by existing input methods, but many symbols that are not part of a given language have varying degrees of support. As such, it valuable to continue to provide commands that cover these symbols. As for the font/typographic/output considerations, these are important reasons to continue using text commands. Given that users’ situations will vary, I foresee a mixed usage of Unicode symbols and text commands. There will need to be a way to handle this gracefully—and more robustly than, say, just asking users to prefer text commands. Warmly, Kelly