How to easily input and display isolated japanese radicals on MacOS X?

Question

(This question was considered as off-topic on Japanese.SE and more suitable for SuperUser).

I like to write computer notes about what I learn in Japanese. From time to time, I would like to be able to include in my text a given radical, say kokoro 心, which takes several graphic forms when used as an element in a more complex kanji, for instance .

I did not succeed on my system (Mac OS X 10.7) to find the glyphs for these variants conveniently and exactly as I would like them (I would also be interested about how to do this on Windows 7 or Linux).

I first tried the name of the kanji from which the radical is derived.　Then I tried to use the japanese name for them, such as risshinben (as in 快)　and shitagokoro (as in 志), hoping that the hiragana or katakana input would recognize them and propose me their representation, but it did not work.

So I looked into the Full Japanese Character Table, under the "by radical" tab, and found at least a version of each of them : 忄 (CJK 5FC4) and 㣺 (CJK 38FA) with the correct kun readings. I have them now as favorites but do I need to do that for all radicals? Do I need to register all of them in a user dictionary? I would imagine that I am not the only one who wants to do use them.

Besides, the versions I have found are not suited for all occasions: they are centered on a standard kanji square. If I want them to appear near to a placeholder, or demonstrate their proportion to the rest of a typical kanji, I have to make complicated adjustments, depending on my use and the kind of radical.

More generally are there computer tools for japanese dictionary editors and japanese teachers I could use on Mac OS X?

(I could not add relevant tags such as : japanese or ideogram, please feel free to edit)

Answer 1

In the character viewer, there is a category called "Han Radicals" which contains the 214 traditional Radicals and their variations. In order to use it, you have to add the category first:

1. Open the character viewer (e.g. by clicking on the input method symbol and choosing "show character viewer")
2. In the upper left corner, click on the settings symbol (with the gear) and click on "customize list"
3. Expand the category "East Asian Script" and check the category "Han Radicals"
4. Click "Done"

Now you are able to access the radicals through the character viewer