Filed under: Software, Cool tools, Graphic Design
PopChar X 4.0
PopChar X, the little utility that gets all of those funky symbols, accents, and other special characters into your documents without having to remember arcane key codes, has been updated to version 4 for Mac.PopChar has been around for over 20 years and is a favorite of editors and designers. To type a special character, you click on a P in the menu bar and a list of characters appears. Selecting the character you want drops it into your current document. Sure, you could always use Apple's Character Palette tool, but it's slow, and difficult to search for a special character in a particular font.
PopChar X 4.0 adds a new feature for searching Unicode characters by name across font boundaries. Ergonis, developer of PopChar, provides an example of searching for a "cubic meters" symbol in Helvetica. Typing in "cub" produces no results, but you can click a new "All" button to search across all Unicode fonts.
You can download a trial version of PopChar X 4.0, or purchase it online from Ergonis for €29.99. Multiple license packs are available at a discount.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Dan said 5:03PM on 6-16-2008
Not quite as full featured, but still very useful (and free):
http://tacowidgets.com/widgets/characterpal/
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Mark said 5:07PM on 6-16-2008
Are you really recommending a tool which costs $46 and does the same thing (but worse) than the character palette which already comes with OS X????
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NutMac said 5:09PM on 6-16-2008
Seconded. This is one super expensive app.
Steven Sande said 5:12PM on 6-16-2008
Absolutely! I've used PopChar in various incarnations for about 20 years, and I rely on it when I'm writing documentation for localized apps. Yeah, the sad state of the dollar makes it a bit expensive now, but in terms of the amount of time that the average PopChar user saves while writing / editing docs with a lot of special characters or accents, it's a bargain.
TUAW Steve
CaptSaltyJack said 5:29PM on 6-16-2008
*cough*ripoff! Excuse me, my throat's been bugging me today.
Shame on the developers for the outrageous price on this app.
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Max said 6:26PM on 6-16-2008
I don't usually complain about price, but this is absurd. $45 for a one-trick pony? There are other alternatives for less $ which do more things (Art Directors Toolkit comes to mind) or I can use the free widget mentioned above (or the Input Menu). For 10-15 dollars maybe.
Pricing like this is why so many people pirate software.
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Andrew Harrison said 8:23PM on 6-16-2008
Uhh
1. System Preferences -> International -> Input Menu -> Character Palette -> On
2. click the little flag in the menu bar and click on Character Palette.
3. Buy yourself a present with your €45
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Ed said 5:16AM on 6-17-2008
+1. I use it all the time. I wouldn't dream of paying anything for this, nevermind the prices quoted here.
obtusegoose said 8:23AM on 6-17-2008
I was a PopChar user a long long time ago, but as it's been said here, they priced themselves out of reach for me. I'm sure a ton of time has been spent making this software, but the reality is most people wouldn't pay more than $5 or $10 for something like this. Especially with the widget listed above being donation-ware.
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