Pop Char X – 3.0 – Find the missing characters you need in a single click

reviewed by Harry Babad & Chris Marshall

Introduction: Neither of use has ever been accused of being at a loss for words, but PopChar is so focused and functional that weÕve decided to follow the KISS rule in this review.

What they say: Tired of searching and remembering keyboard combinations for umlauts and other special characters? Want to get the most out of your fonts? Then PopChar is the right tool for you. ItÕs invisible, almost, until you needed it, then its one click away in your menubar.

PopChar makes "typing" of unusual characters easy without having to remember keyboard combinations. Whenever you need a special character, PopChar is there to help. Click the "P" in the menu bar to display a table of characters. Select the desired character and it instantly appears in your document. A convenient side drawer holds a list of your installed fonts so navigating to the one you want is easy.

PopChar X supports Unicode fonts with thousands of characters available. Just switch from ASCII to Unicode to see all of them, neatly arranged in the standard Unicode categories.

Web designers will especially enjoy the ability to insert HTML symbols.

Do you write documents in different fonts, HarryÕs phone list is in comic sans, and just click on as in the document in the pull down menu and youÕll have access to all the characters in that font.

What I say: Watch the demonstration video (http://www.ergonis.com/products/popcharx/PopCharXMovie.html), download the application and then try and work out why you have waited so long for a product like this. I spent the first 30 minutes alternatively smiling like a 4 year old in a candy shop, and kicking myself for not having had this product before.

Now of course if you never use special characters, this will be a total waste of time but between us, I (Chris) communicate via IM and email in English and Spanish, and use the Û and ₤ a lot, as a quick look at my own Recent Characters drop down will show you. One extremely useful feature is the way Pop Char intuitively creates your own list of characters based on your usage. Not only that, but it automatically uses the font that you are using at the time.

A Gripe or Three

Setup and Initial Use Issue — I (Chris) had an initial problem working out where the application had gone. All that is visible is the ÒPÓ icon and you have to right click on that to register and set preferences, and É the default puts the icon in the top left hand side of the menu bar, which meant that every time I went to use it I tended to overshoot and as I have Expose set to show my Desktop in that active corner everything disappeared. It is easy thought to choose between left, centre or right of your menu bar. A trip to the preferences pane soon fixed my problem

Harry says there are two missing feature that weaken this otherwise excellent product:

Highlighting Selected Characters to Ease Finding Them Again — An earlier version of PopChar highlighted, in yellow, characters IÕd selected. That characterÕs highlighting did not go away either when I closed the application, or rebooted. Please, bring that feature back, it save us from a bit of eyestrain. There is a recent characters feature, that works, but I prefer the all-in-one ability to see highlights.

Absence of a Way to Designate Favorite Fonts — Most of us use only a handful of the large number of fonts installed on our systems. It would shorten the font list, if in a manner similar to that used by either Apple or UnsanityÕs FontCard, http://www.unsanity.com/haxies/fontcard/, we could search only for most recently used or favorite fonts. The fonts list shown in the pull-down menu bears no resemblance to the fonts I frequently use. However, by selecting as in document, this problem can be largely negated changing the gripe to a nit. Thanks Chris!

NOTE: You were aware that all sorts of application install font sets on your computer, werenÕt you? You havenÕt checked lately, hmmm.

In Summary

This is an excellent, easy to use product that will save you time when searching for key-bard combinations for symbols, accented or non-English characters and the like. Some of you may find the initial price a bit high, but I (Harry) have been using the software almost every day since it was first released in what is now known as a Classic version. Upgrades were and are still free. I have never regretted paying the shareware fee. For those of you who do cost-benefit analyses, at minimum wage, searching the hard way for 2-4 minutes day for elusive font keyboard shortcuts, you are soon in the black.

Try it, then buy it! We gladly give this product 4.5 macCs