I am unable to use [brackets] and {braces} in Gedit on Mac OS X (snow leopard)

I have searched everywhere. The bug tracking system on http://projects.gnome.org/gedit/ is broken. Don't know how to use IRC(even if I did, irc.gnome.org is a very weird site of which i understand nothing). You are my last hope:

How on earth do I create [brackets]/{braces} in gedit on mac? And no, alt+8/9 does not work and shift+alt+8/9 does not work either. The combinations work in every other application, but not in the one where I need it the most. gedit.

Thank you.

EDIT:

Keyboard: qwerty

Gedit is running standalone.

I can copy paste them into gedit which is what I have been doing so far, but as i begin to delve into Dicts in python this is becomming increasingly time consuming.

My computer is a 2007 macbook(intel)

And yes, I have tried re-installing gedit :)

This is a known bug of Gedit Mac

http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gedit-list/2010-October/msg00010.html