Double-clicking the table entry has no visual support like buttons. The user has to know that an interaction is possible. Quite common when trying new UIs is right clicking controls since no immediate action is expected but what is possible would be shown in a context menu. So we should add this context menu with Insert (double-click) Add to favorites Copy to clipboard The copy function allows to use our dialog for other applications. E.g. when I want to insert the coptic char Ϥ in a browser.
And if you add this complexity, e.g. more than a double click to select glyph to canvas or favorites widget, may as well add the 'Characters' edit buffer back to the dialog (with a show/hide option if folks insist).
Akshay Deep committed a patch related to this issue. It has been pushed to "master": http://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core/commit/?id=f9af8a35fc1aad055af2b5e6b6eab45a7d060719 tdf#111337 - Introduce alternative workflows at the special characters dialog It will be available in 6.0.0. The patch should be included in the daily builds available at http://dev-builds.libreoffice.org/daily/ in the next 24-48 hours. More information about daily builds can be found at: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Testing_Daily_Builds Affected users are encouraged to test the fix and report feedback.
Closing as fixed, ignoring Stuart's hijacking. :-) (Please open another ticket- but this would likely not get solved in this GSoC project)