Can the "Insert Special Character" dialog be made easier?

I’m a recent convert from Word, and I love most of the features of LO. However, I would like to request some changes to the “Insert Special Character” dialog. In Word a character isn’t entered until the user double-clicks (which I like for the sake of confirmation), and furthermore the user can click off the window, continue editing the document, and insert a special character in a completely different location. I don’t like having to open the dialog every time I need a new character, which can happen a lot in my case. At least, could the user be given the power to edit the characters they are inserting more freely, rather than just deleting them all at once?

Enhancement bug submitted, see https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=56301.

You might have a look at → Special characters.

I don’t care for keyboard shortcuts, though. And I don’t trust macros/extensions.

there seems to be keyboard short cuts, however I have not found out myself, thus it would be helpful to get a hint on keyboard shortcuts

You want to submit an enhancement bug here Bugzilla.