The history of PopChar (1987 - 2007)

by Günther Blaschek

Character Map

It all started back in 1987, when I tried to find a few special characters in the Symbol font. Apple's Key Caps utility was not very helpful because I had to try all sorts of keyboard combinations to see which characters were available.

Being a software developer, I decided to write a simple utility that allowed me to select characters in a more convenient way. I wrote this utility in Turbo Pascal on a Mac Plus with 2.5 MB of memory. Since memory was very limited in those days, it was not possible to run more than one application at the same time. "Desk accessories" were an exception, as they were accessible from the Apple menu and could open a window on top of the current application. I therefore created a desk accessory called "Character Map" which displayed all symbols in a given font and let me copy and paste them into a text document.

PopChar Lite

Character Map was simple and intuitive to use, but I felt that it could be improved. It should directly insert the selected characters in the current document and it should be available permanently. The solution was to turn it into a system extension (called an "INIT" at that time). The first version was a quick hack, put together in an afternoon, using code from Character Map. When I clicked in a corner of the screen, the CHARacters POPped up, so I called the thing "PopChar".

Since then, I have been asked multiple times how to pronounce PopChar. I live and work in Austria, so I used to pronounce it like "pop car" (we pronounce the German word "Charakter" with a "K"). Most English-speaking people pronounce the second syllable like "charcoal" or "charming". Today, I freely mix these two pronunciations, depending on who I talk to.

In the beginning, it was just "PopChar". The word "Lite" was added with the introduction of PopChar Pro to make it clear which version was more powerful.

In fact, the first version of PopChar was extremely simple. There was no visual clue where to click; clicking the black rounded area in the top-left corner of the screen activated PopChar; the characters popped up, pointing at a character and releasing the mouse button inserted the character. Nevertheless, PopChar worked remarkably well for me, so I decided to share it with other Mac users and made it available as freeware. The responses from the Mac community were overwhelming. Many users liked the idea and suggested further improvements.

One significant improvement was the conversion of PopChar into a control panel, so users had a few options to control the look and feel of PopChar.

Here are two snapshots of an early version of PopChar, running on a Mac Plus:

The convenience of PopChar was achieved by means of three essential techniques:

	PopChar guessed the font that was in use in the current application. This was relatively simple in earlier Mac OS versions because PopChar could access data structures within the current application, look for the Font menu and scan the menu for an item with a check mark. This technique worked well for most applications, since most applications had a Font menu.
	PopChar scanned the current font for available characters, so the character table contained only those characters that could really be used in the font.
	PopChar simulated keystrokes to generate the selected character, as if the user had pressed the corresponding keyboard combination.

These techniques worked pretty well in most cases, in particular with applications that conformed to Apple’s guidelines.

Unfortunately, some applications and system extensions (notably Microsoft Word and Adobe Type Reunion) caused nasty problems. New font formats such as the introduction of TrueType fonts also made it more difficult to find the available characters. It sometimes took weeks to find a suitable workaround, but new applications, new system software versions and new fonts kept me busy for several years.

PopChar was still freeware. I asked users who liked PopChar to send me postcards and stamps. I cannot tell how many postcards and stamps I received over the years.

PopChar Pro

In 1995, I found myself spending too much of my spare time with fixes and improvements of PopChar, so I felt it was time to earn some money for these efforts. I switched to another programming environment (CodeWarrior) and redeveloped PopChar from scratch. Eight years of experience helped me to avoid the previous problems and to add new features that I (and other users) had found useful. It took more than a year to finish the new product, PopChar Pro. The Pro version came with adjustable font sizes, manual font selection (for those applications where the automatic detection of the current font did not work), a floating window, a layout editor, and it worked in multiple languages.

In late 1996, PopChar Pro was released. My former colleague, Christoph Reichenberger, who had already gained experience in software distribution with his product VOODOO, took over the distribution of PopChar Pro.

PopChar X

In 2001, Apple introduced Mac OS X. This was a major change that made most of the technologies used in PopChar Pro useless. PopChar Pro relied heavily on the availability of system-wide patches that were no longer possible in Mac OS X. In addition to this, Mac OS X came with strict memory protection, so PopChar could no longer access data structures in the current application. It was therefore time for another big change.

PopChar X was implemented as a separate application that waited in the background most of the time. Clicking the small "P" in the corner of the screen opened a floating window that basically offered the same features as the previous version. The most important difference was that PopChar X could not detect the font being used in the current application, so the new version came with a font menu for selecting the desired font.

PopChar X was still developed with CodeWarrior, but now in C++, and using the Carbon framework as the technological basis.
In the meanwhile, Christoph Reichenberger had founded his own company. In May 2001, the Ergonis Software web site went online with the first PopChar version for Mac OS X.

PopChar Win

Last not least, another important thing happened in 2004, when Johannes Sametinger joined the Ergonis team to develop the long-awaited Windows version of PopChar.

Looking back

PopChar has seen quite a few changes in technology in 20 years:

	Mac models have changed from the Mac Plus to the Mac Pro.
	Displays have advanced from the original 512x342 built-in screen in black-and-white to 30-inch monitors with millions of colors.
	PopChar has been running on all types of processors that have been used in Macs: starting with the first 68000 processors, up to the Motorola 68030, then various PowerPC models, and now Macs with multiple Intel processors.
	Versions of PopChar have been running on all MacOS versions from System 4.2 to Mac OS X 10.5.
	PopChar has seen various word processors come and go. WriteNow and MacWrite no longer exist, ClarisWorks (aka AppleWorks) has been discontinued, and FrameMaker is no longer available on the Mac. InDesign and Pages appeared on the market. Only Microsoft Word and QuarkXpress already existed in 1987 and still exists today.
	The implementation language has changed from Turbo Pascal to Object Pascal, then C++, and finally Objective-C.
	Four different development environments were involved: Turbo Pascal, Think Pascal, CodeWarrior and now Xcode.
	Font technology has changed from simple bitmap fonts to TrueType and PostScript fonts and now OpenType.

To survive all these changes, PopChar has been redesigned and re-implemented from ground up again and again. These efforts were necessary to ensure steady evolution of PopChar and continuous support for our long-time customers.