PopChar Pro

PopChar Pro - Frequently Asked Questions

Questions

The following questions are answered on this page:

	Does PopChar Pro work with Mac OS X?
	Is PopChar Pro compatible with Microsoft Office 2001?
	My Mac crashes at startup with PopChar Pro installed. What can I do?
	How can I tell PopChar Pro to create fractions like 3/4?
	Why does Eudora Lite constantly access the disk drive when the PopChar Pro Floater is open?
	Why doesn't PopChar Pro recognize fonts with long names in Word 6?
	Why can't PopChar Pro create the hacek character needed in Czech?

Just click on the question and you will be directed right to the corresponding answer.

Answers

Does PopChar Pro work with Mac OS X?

PopChar comes in two flavors: PopChar Pro works with Mac OS versions up to 9.x, and PopChar X works with Mac OS X.

If you still have an older Mac that can boot into Mac OS 9 as well as Mac OS X, you can install PopChar Pro on the Mac OS 9 system and PopChar X for Mac OS X on the same Mac. Please note that this does not work for the Classic environment on Mac OS X. PopChar Pro does not work in the Classic environment, and PopChar X does not support Classic applications.

Is PopChar Pro compatible with Microsoft Office 2001?

Yes, but you have to add a "Font box" to the toolbars of Word, PowerPoint and Excel. Please see the PopChar Pro User's Guide for details.

My Mac crashes at startup with PopChar Pro installed. What can I do?

This is very likely caused by an incompatibility between Mac OS 9.1 (or newer), Microsoft Office Manager (aka MOM) and PopChar Pro. Similar problems occur with MOM and other third-party extensions, even if PopChar Pro is not installed. The problem has been solved in newer versions of MOM, available from Microsoft.

How can I tell PopChar Pro to create fractions like 3/4?

Fractions are often used for measurements in feet and inches. The problem is similar to the hacek problem described below. To create a fraction, you need one of the following:

a) a font that contains frequently used fractions (such as 1/2, 1/4, 3/4) as single characters, or

b) a word processor with a built-in formula editor (such as FrameMaker or Microsoft Word)

PopChar Pro cannot create fractions if they are not available in the current font, but if they are available in a font, PopChar Pro will show them when this font is in use. It will also teach you which key combinations are required to create the special characters.

Why does Eudora Lite constantly access the disk drive when the PopChar Pro Floater is open?

When the PopChar Pro Floater is open, it needs to know what the current font of the frontmost application is. The current font is normally retrieved by inspecting the Font menu. Unfortunately, most applications do not immediately update the check mark in the Font menu when the font changes. To work around that problem, the PopChar Pro Floater periodically generates fake clicks in the menu bar to force the current application to update the Font menu.

When you click the menu bar in Eudora Lite, many menus are updated. This process apparently requires Eudora Lite to access the disk. Since Eudora Lite doesn't have a Font menu, the fake clicks generated by the PopChar Pro Floater are absolutely useless. You can easily work around the problem by manually selecting the proper font in PopChar Pro (shift-click the menu to select the font used for text in Eudora Lite). When a specific font is manually chosen, the Floater will always display this font; it will never need to generate fake clicks.

Why doesn't PopChar Pro recognize long font names in Word 6?

You may occasionally find that PopChar Pro doesn't recognize fonts like "Hoefler Text Ornaments" while it properly handles other fonts with shorter names. The problem is that Word 6 doesn't have a font menu. PopChar Pro works around the problem by "reading" the name of the current font from the font pop-up box in Word's toolbar. When that box is too narrow, long font names can appear truncated, as shown in the following illustration:

When that happens, PopChar Pro tries to find a font named "Hoefler Text Orname...". Since it cannot find such a font, the previously used font will be displayed.

To solve the problem, make sure the font box is wide enough to display the longest font name. To do that, perform the following steps:

Click the pop-up menu next to the font box and select the font with the longest name.
Select the Customize... command from the Tools menu.
In the window that appears, click the Toolbars tab.
Click the font box in the toolbar to select it. The box should now appear with a dotted outline.
Move the cursor over the right edge of the outline until it appears as two vertical lines with arrows pointing left and right. This cursor form indicates that you can now shrink or expand the font box. The exact position may be hard to find. Move the cursor slowly until it looks like this:
Drag the right edge of the font box further to the right. Adjust the size of the box such that the font name is entirely visible.
Click the Close button in the Customize dialog.

Why can't PopChar Pro create the hacek character needed in Czech?

Some languages (e.g., Croatian, Czech and Welsh) have letters with "unusual" diacritical marks. Please note that we have put "unusual" in quotes; these marks are of course quite usual in the respective languages, but they were not foreseen by Apple when they defined their extended ASCII character set. Apple's ASCII contains the accented letters needed in French, the umlauts needed in German, the cedilla and characters needed in Spanish, but unfortunately not the hacek (an upside-down caret on top of the letter "c") and other special characters of Croatian, Czech and Welsh.

In the good old days of the typewriter, one could first write the letter and then type the diacritical mark on top of that letter. The problem is that computers work differently: Every single letter/mark combination (such as accented or umlauted letters) is represented as a single character.

To produce a letter with an accent on top of it, you need a font that contains the desired characters. PopChar Pro cannot create new characters by combining existing ones; it can display only those characters that are already present in the current font. Once you have a font that contains the needed characters, PopChar Pro will of course show them when this font is in use. It will also teach you which key combinations are required to create the special characters.

PopChar Pro users contributed the following sources where fonts for specific languages can be found:

Source	Description
SIL	This is a very heavily used resource for those seeking to work in unusual languages. Almost everything SIL offers is freeware and most is of high enough quality to be used in work intended for publication.
Apple Computer available via FTP	This disk image contains a couple of fonts with all sorts of diacritical marks for Eastern European languages: Courier CE, Geneva CE, Helvetica CE, London CE, Los Angeles CE, New York CE, Palatino CE, Times CE, Venice CE- However, some of these fonts are available only as bitmap fonts (no TrueType).
Linguist's Software Inc. P.O. Box 580 Edmonds WA 98020-0580 USA phone: (206) 775-1130	Linguist's Software provides a set of fonts intended for linguists. The fonts contain all sorts of diacritical marks. In the font named IPA Extras, one can find the s, z, and c with the upside down caret on top. (Contributed by Louisa Cauvin)
Ecological Linguistics P.O. Box 15156 Washington, D.C., 20003 USA phone: (202) 546 5862 ECOLING@Applelink.Apple.com	Ecolingical Linguistics have all sorts of foreign fonts, including Hieroglyphics, North American Indian Langs. IPA, Homeric Greek, etc. (Contributed by Clark A. Richardson)
Smart Link Corporation 4695 MacArthur Court Ste. 230 Newport Beach CA 92660, USA phone: (800) 256 4814, (714) 552 1599 fax: (714) 552 1699 smrtlnk@smartlinkcorp.com has a WWW page.	Smart Link Corporation offers several fonts for East European languages for the Mac. Supported languages include Czech, Hungarian, Polish, and Slovak.
DekSoft 27 Gissing Street Blackburn South, VIC 3130 Australia sales@deksoft.com has a WWW page	DekSoft offers fonts for Baltic languages.
Info-Mac (see your local Info-Mac mirror)	The Info-Mac archive has many fonts for all sorts of languages. Check out the /font directory. For TrueType fonts, go to the /font/tt directory. You can find these fonts also in the Info-Mac HyperArchive.
UMich (see your local UMich mirror)	The UMich archive has many fonts for all sorts of languages. Check out the /system.extensions/font directory.
Yamada Language Center Font Archive	The Yamada Language Center Font Archive has many fonts available for download.

If anyone of you knows of other specific fonts for problematic languages, please let us know and send a brief report to PopChar Pro Support. We will collect the information and publish it on this page.

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