[KevinH]

For example with the attached patch and changes to special_chars.xml you can work with multiple codepoint emojis (at least on my up-to-date KDE Plasma Manjaro Linux box).

<chargroup label="Emojis">
<cp hex="1F1E6 1F1F6" label="" desc="antartica flag"/>
<cp hex="1F3F3 FE0F 200D 1F308" label="" desc="rainbow flag"/>
</chargroup>

diff --git a/src/Dialogs/SelectCharacter.cpp b/src/Dialogs/SelectCharacter.cpp
index 762472dc8..3b0b5bb73 100644
--- a/src/Dialogs/SelectCharacter.cpp
+++ b/src/Dialogs/SelectCharacter.cpp
@@ -124,11 +124,17 @@ void SelectCharacter::SetList()
                         QString hexcd = xml_reader.attributes().value("", "hex").toString();
                         QString label = xml_reader.attributes().value("", "label").toString();
                         QString desc = xml_reader.attributes().value("", "desc").toString();
-                        bool ok = false;
-                        char32_t codepoint = (char32_t) hexcd.toUInt(&ok, 16);
-                        if (!ok) continue;
-                        QString sval = QString::fromUcs4(&codepoint, 1);
-                        QString entity = "&#x" + hexcd + ";";
+                        // handle the case of a space delimted hex string for multiple codepoints such as emojis
+                        QStringList cplist = hexcd.split(' ', Qt::SkipEmptyParts);
+                        QString sval;
+                        QString entity;
+                        foreach(QString cph, cplist) {
+                            bool ok = false;
+                            char32_t codepoint = (char32_t) cph.toUInt(&ok, 16);
+                            if (!ok) continue;
+                            sval += QString::fromUcs4(&codepoint, 1);
+                            entity += "&#x" + cph + ";";
+                        }
                         custom_characters << sval << label << entity << desc;
                     }
                 }

And it appears to work just fine and does not mess with normal cp tags with only one hexcd.

So this would be a very very easy change to push now if people are interested.