Hi,
Just a quick note to let you know that we’ve set up a mailing list for Ghostotter related news. If you’d like to keep up to date on what we’re up to, read tutorials and all that sort of exciting stuff then please subscribe here:
Thanks!
We’re pleased to announce that our new app, Fonty is now available on the Mac App Store. Fonty is an invaluable tool for anyone working with multiple languages. Whether you’re a digital typesetter, graphic designer or translator, Fonty can help you choose the right font for the job.
Fonty scans the fonts installed in your Mac and checks shows which ones contain one or more character set of your choosing. For example, maybe you need to choose a font that contains the Euro currency symbol and also supports Cyrillic (Russian) characters. Or a font that supports the Greek and Kazakh alphabet. Fonty can help you do this!
Of course, you can use the built-in character sets. However, the real power of Fonty comes from the ability to create or edit character sets of your own as you see fit. Look under the Preferences menu to work with character sets.
Hi,
A number of users pointed out that yesterday (11th March 2015) they were unable to buy our products on the Mac App Store. This was because of an issue at Apple’s end and so was completely beyond our control. Luckily, the Mac App Store is now back online so if you were one of the unlucky few yesterday, please try again today. Apologies for the inconvenience.
As a reminder, our products are:
Barcode Basics – Barcode generation
Ai Actions – Automator actions for controlling Adobe Illustrator
OnScreen Barcode Scanner – Scans barcodes from your Mac’s screen
Script Backgrounder – Make AppleScript Applets run in the background
Stopwatch Basics – A simple stopwatch app
PDF Basics – A simple PDF viewer with the ability to combine pdfs, extract pages and extract text.
We’re looking for beta testers on Mac OS 10.10 (Yosemite)! We’re working on a simple app which can be used to check whether an installed font contains certain sets of characters. e.g. characters required for Russian languages, and/or common currency symbols etc. The app contains some preset character sets, but users can create their own.
We’d like a few people to test it and let us know what they think. If you often work with multilingual text and/or know a little bit about fonts (you don’t need to be an expert) then we’d like to hear from you. Beta testers will receive a free copy of the completed app. If you’re interested in being part of the beta test, reply to this message.
Many moons ago there existed an app called DropScript Backgrounder. It allowed you to turn an AppleScript application* into a background process, that’s to say it would be hidden from the Dock and Force Quit menus. It can be helpful, for example, if you want a stay open app to run unobtrusively in the background without disturbing the user.
Unfortunately, DropScript Backgrounder no longer seems to be available so we’ve created our very own Script Backgrounder to fill the gap it has left. You can get your copy from the Mac App Store.
* An app created in Script Editor and saved as an application.
An update to our popular Mac OS X barcode creator, Barcode Basics, is now available from the Mac App Store. It’s a free upgrade for existing users and can be installed via Software Update.
The update fixes a bug affecting some users which prevented EAN-8 barcodes being saved.
We’ve just released the latest version of Barcode Basics, our Mac OS X barcode creator. The update makes it compatible with Mac OS 10.10, aka Yosemite. Of course, it still works as usual on all previously supported versions of Mac OS X.
Barcode Basics – Mac OS X barcode generator for under $10
If you’re looking for a barcode generator with pro features such as BWR, vector output and GS1 compliance then it’s the only barcode software on the Mac App Store for under $10.00!
To buy your copy, visit the Mac App Store. Upgrades for existing users are free as usual.
If you’d like to try before you buy then we have a
limited demo version of Barcode Basics available for download.
If you’re thinking of buying yourself some software from the Mac App Store then it might be worth taking a look at this offer from PayPal:
https://www.paypal-gifts.com/uk/itunes-promotion.html
Basically, you can get up to 25% off by using a gift card. Its fine to buy a gift card for yourself, of course!
The offer is valid for all Ghostotter products including:
Barcode Basics – Mac OS X barcode creator
Ai Auto Save – Auto-save for Adobe Illustrator
Ai Actions – Automator actions for Adobe Illustrator
The offer ends on Thursday 28 August 2014 at 11:59 pm BST, and (as far as we can tell) it’s UK only.
It’s my birthday tomorrow so if you’re in my office then you’ll be getting doughnuts. For the rest of you, we’ll be selling our three most popular products to half price for 24 hours only… starting now! That means:
Barcode Basics
Our best selling barcode creator is reduced from $9.99 to $4.99
Ai Auto Save
Automatic saving for Adobe Illustrator, reduced from $4.99 to $1.99
Ai Actions
Automator Actions for Adobe Illustrator, reduced from $11.99 to $5.99
– Rob Stott, Ghostotter Founder
Our popular Mac barcode maker, Barcode Basics is now at version 2.4. This version sees the addition of five new pharmacies. These are codes used by the pharmaceutical industry, mostly on packaging. The new codes include the global standard Laetus code which is used in most countries worldwide, plus codes for countries who have their own national standards (PZN codes for Germany and Italian Pharmacodes). The full list is as follows:
Pharmacode (Laetus)
This is the barcode standard used in the pharmaceutical industry worldwide, with a few exceptions. It stores numeric digits only from 3 to 131070.
Two-track Pharmacode
A variant of the Pharmacode
PZN7 and PZN8
Germany has its own barcode standard for pharmaceuticals, the catchily named “Pharmazentralnummer”, or PZN for short. PZN8 codes replaced PZN7 codes some time ago. Odds are you won’t need PZN7 however, we’ve included it for the sake of completeness.
Italian Pharmacode
Italy also has its own barcode standard for pharmaceutical labelling. It is based on the Code 32 barcode symbology. It is preceded by the letter “A” in the text below the code although the “A” is not encoded in the bars. That’s to say, you don’t need to enter the letter A as part of your code number in Barcode Basics. It will be added automatically.
Click the above image to download a PDF sample of pharmacode produced by Barcode Basics. Click on the Mac App Store link below to purchase your copy.