Regarding the “EASY” way to enter special characters using “ALT+ some kepad sequence”, you might want to play the “Special Character Game”!
Open Word or Wordpad or Write (those support Graphics as well) and select a font, say WINGDINGS. Set the size to 10-14 points and then, with your cursor located where you want to start, start using a sequence of entries starting with ALT+0001 (make sure that all numerical sequences are 4 characters) and progressing through ALT+0002 … ALT+0172, etc.
As you lift the ALT key, you may be surprised at what shows up.
Enjoy…and maybe this will prove useful if you type in the sequence you used to get the characters you chose and DON’T FORGET TO SAVE TO DOCUMENT!
Try this with your standard fonts so you can tell what you’d get with specific keystrokes.