Lewis wrote:
But the point remains, what normal user
is going to search for characters that aren't shown on their
keyboards?

Zoë, Chloë, AntonÃ*a, and the billions of people who don't speak English.

Plus anyone who needs to correspond with any European country other than
the UK.

Plus anyone who prefers to spell café or première, or talk about Cañada
College rather than Canada College (or spell tennis-players' names
correctly).

option-e + a vowel puts an accute accent on the vowel. Option-u plus a
vowel puts ü over the vowel. So I don't have to remember a different 4
digit code for ë and ü and ö.

Exactly. Easy typing of accented characters was one of the three
reasons I bought my first Mac in 1989 instead of a PC.

(The second was Finale, which was then only available on the Mac. The
third was HyperCard sigh)

Paul Magnussen