Thanks. #1 was actually a design decision, not that we didn't want to make those options work together but that we couldn't get them working together smoothly enough for 2.0.1 - we'll take another run at it for 2.0.2, though.
With the Alt key, unfortunately we couldn't find a way to bring up that menu in our custom text fields, so the best way to input those symbol characters is with the Keyboard panel of the Input screen - doesn't support everything, but some otherwise-inaccessible common characters like the semicolon are available that way at least. You could also enable Input Field Compatibility mode, though that brings a number of tradeoffs (no support for mixing SC / TC, etc).