Changing default symbols bound to option key?

Question

When I type ⌥ and some letter a special character usually shows up - this would be really useful except for the fact that I have no use for a lot of these characters. How can I customize which characters are bound to these shortcuts?

Answer 1

Create the folder ~/Library/KeyBindings/ and in it create a file called DefaultKeyBinding.dict and add whatever special character you need like so:

{
    "~c" = (insertText:, "⌘");
}

This makes ⌥+c insert the symbol ⌘. For more information on this file and its syntax refere to this article. After editing the file you need to restart your application for the changes to take effect.