Unicode fonts

What are Unicode fonts?

Unicode fonts are created with a 16-bit character encoding standard known as Unicode. The aim of Unicode is to be able to encode characters from all major world languages in a single character set, regardless of computer system or platform.

Unicode contains space for over 65,000 characters, and Unicode fonts are available in languages like Greek, Hebrew, Chinese, Han, Hiragana, German, French, English and Japanese. Unicode fonts can also include ideographs, mathematical symbols, technical symbols and special characters for use in the computing and printing industries.

Unicode fonts and Hebrew

Hebrew is a language that is used widely across the world. Although it is the national language of a relatively small state, Israel, it is also used by Jewish people worldwide for religious ceremonies and traditions. The Hebrew alphabet is also used for writing Ladino and Yiddish.

If you need to use Hebrew Unicode fonts, you can choose between several different alternatives. If you're only going write in Hebrew, you will probably want a special keyboard. However, if you are writing a letter or an essay in English and you want to be able to insert a few Hebrew words or characters, PopChar is the ideal solution. This advanced character map enables you to insert characters from any installed Hebrew Unicode font into any application that can handle Unicode - quickly and easily.

Unicode fonts and Greek

Greek, of course, is spoken by people in Greece, but also by many Greek emigrants across the world. Although no longer the language of a leading civilisation, Greek is still important to anyone with an interest in history or religion. Biblical scholars often need Greek Unicode fonts for works that include references to classical texts, because this allows them to use Classical, polytonic Greek letters that include accents and breathing marks.

In order to do this, you normally need to change your keyboard - but with PopChar, using Greek Unicode fonts is much easier. PopChar enables you to insert characters from any installed Greek Unicode font quickly and easily - no matter what application you're using, as long as it can handle Unicode.

This user-friendly character map lets you insert Unicode characters with a quick mouse click - and it works with any application that can handle Unicode. Whenever you need a Unicode character, PopChar is there to help. Click the little "P" symbol in the corner of your screen to display a table of characters. Select the desired character and it instantly appears in your document. No more memorizing keystrokes!

PopChar is great for other things too! You can use it to insert Hebrew, Greek and Arabic characters, and it also supports other technical languages like HTML.

Read more about the Mac version or the Windows version of PopChar here!

PopChar has had a lot of positive feedback and reviews. Here's what Matt Neuburg wrote in his review in TidBITS#641/05-Aug-02:

... The interface for character display is superbly simple, clean, and convenient: characters are shown in a single scrolling pane, but that pane is clearly divided into sections (Greek, Cyrillic, Arrows, Hiragana, and so forth) and a pop-down menu scrolls instantly to any section. PopChar X is now both an excellent way to examine your fonts and a significant Unicode input method: for those wishing to use more than the plain Latin alphabet, it's a must-have utility.