Hi Chris,

I can address your first question and maybe your last question.

The special XPP method of using SHIFT + F2 to enter any Unicode character is expecting a sequence of hex characters terminated by the Enter (or RETURN) key. So you'll want to use the hex value of the Unicode character and yes SHIFT + F2 will accept characters 0-9, a-f, or A-F and from one up to six hex characters for the Unicode value. In fact, in the XyView application when you type SHIFT + F2 the prompt is "Enter 1-6 hex codes; press RETURN".

This special XPP method of using SHIFT + F2 will work in any mode division (Classic, XML, SGML, CSS) and it will not matter whether the character has a named entity defined or not (as far as entering the character successfully - whether it gets "rendered" correctly or not is another question).

As far as setting up any special XPP keyboards or macros, that really depends on whether you want any alternate ways to "enter" Unicode characters into a document. If you want to be able to use an ALT + Keyboard Char + Key or PI + Keyboard Char + Key sequence to enter any particular Unicode character, then you would need to set up (or modify) an XPP keyboard to do that. Using macros could also work, but be aware that doing that means that any Unicode character(s) output by those macros will be "generated text", which has its own set of caveats.

I think that in any mode XPP division, "out-of-the-ordinary" Unicode characters should "export" and "import" fine as numeric character entities (when a named entity is not defined) and I think that in any XPP mode division that UTF-8 will also work on "import" and if you use the -utf8 (fromxsf) option (or corresponding option in PathFinder) on "export" then you'll get UTF-8 out (when you don't get out an entity).

As far as your other two questions:

• What's the best way to access the full set of Unicode glyphs that may be available in a particular font?
• Does the XPP FAST need any special configuration for those special characters that are within the font - that is, characters that are NOT in a symbol or dingbat font?

... I'm not sure that I understand what you're asking with these questions. That's probably because I'm thinking as a "developer" (of the XPP software) and not so much as a "user". Perhaps someone else would better address those questions.

And here is an answer to the 2 remaining questions:

• What is the best way to access the full set of Unicode glyphs that may be available in a particular font?
• Does the XPP FAST need any special configuration...

If you are asking about foreign language characters or even symbols, there is no special setup needed.
That is the beauty of our unicode based XPP system. If you load an OTF or TTF font, XPP will handle the unicode characters correctly. 
(no special setup needed)
So if you input a certain unicode character and that character is available in your font, XPP will do the right thing and output the correct character.
Even better the character will be recognized and if you ask for an uppercase or lowercase variant of it, you will get the proper character.
Also the character will be correctly handled by the hyphenation program.

Ligatures like ffi will be no problem as well.

Things go not so well when we talk of the additional features that Adobe build into their fonts and that are supported by the Adobe product suit out of the box: small caps, old style figures, ...
These things are not understood by the XPP system at all. (because they are not part of the unicode standard)
If you want your XPP system to do the right things with those, you will have a lot of manual work after loading the font.

Support for those have been asked for many years now during the XPP Wishlist sessions.
But so far without much result...
Maybe this year?

THANK YOU to Bart and Jonathan for your answers - for both the speed and the content. This was exactly what I was looking for.

Warmest regards, Chris

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