POPCHAR X: FIND THE CHARACTER YOU NEED IN A FONT WITHOUT FUSS

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- GLENN FLEISHMAN

Few pieces of Mac software can claim the history of PopChar (fave.co/3818YQ4), a utility that makes it a click and a hover to see the appearance of individual characters in fonts installed on your Mac. Released in 1987 for System 5 and revamped as PopChar X for Mac OS X 10.2 in 2002, many current users weren't born when some of us relied on PopChar as a critical part of our daily workflow in PageMaker, QuarkXPress, and InDesign. (Or even Ready, Set, Go!)

From its earliest days, PopChar popped. When you click in a preferred corner of the screen, the utility pops out, giving you easy access to hundreds to tens of thousands of characters in a given font in its palette-like window. Examine the repertoire available in the font. Hover over a letter to get more information. Click to insert it as plain text, rich text (at a specified size, even), or HTML. And browse your installed typefaces to find the right fit for what you're designing or producing. You can adjust a given font's viewing size individually if the default is too large or too small.

Even when adding Shift and/or Option, pressing keyboard keys only reveals a fraction of modern fonts' characters. (A font here is a set of characters, or glyphs, in a given typeface and style packed into a font file.) Many typographic extras are hidden. You either need to use a design program with a view-all-characters option-like Adobe InDesign's Glyphs viewer-or use the Typography option in the Fonts palette, accessible within Pages and many other apps. (See "How to make use of typographic refinement in Pages and other macOS software [fave.co/3yYcikr].")