Tool in GUI for inserting special characters (as well as support for displaying those characters)?

I’ve noticed that Twhirl doesn’t display all of the same characters as Twitter supports. With the recent surge in popularity of “TwitterKeys” [ http://is.gd/2Kjy ], for example, users have been making more prolific use of non-standard characters that display properly within the Twitter interface. However, when these characters are displayed in Twhirl, they appear as an empty box.

I propose two things: First, it would be great for Twhirl to have the ability to display these characters as intended. Secondly (and more ‘want/would be nice’ than ‘need/really should have’), I think it would kick an enormous amount of ass if there was an integrated tool within the Twhirl GUI to facilitate use of these symbols, alà an icon similar to that for the URL shortening tool. A user clicks on the special characters icon and voilà! A menu appears offering selection of characters.

This could extend well-beyond the mere inclusion of ♥, ♒, ◊, ☢, ☠, ♫, and so on. This function would also be really useful for those discussing world currencies, foreign characters (e.g. à, é, è, ç, ê, ñ, ¿) from English-language keyboards, and other common symbols for which there’s no direct keyboard key (e.g. 1⁄2, o, ©, ®, ¢) but that Twitter still supports.