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Provides: Font repair, and font cache and folder clean-up

Format: Download or CD

Developer: Insider Software

Minimum Requirements: G3 PowerPC or Intel, Mac OS X v10.3, 7MB hard disc space

Processor Compatibility: Universal

Retail Price: $49.95 ($24.95 temporary price to Insider customers)

Availability: Out now

Version Reviewed: 1.6

Smasher is a strange, little, valuable program that helps repair and/or replace (by removal) font caches, folders, and troublesome fonts. The simple fact of computers is that there are a number of functions in your computer that demand your fonts are in tip-top shape, your font caches are in tip-top shape, and access to all of your fonts are tip top. So what do you do if things are not so tip top? You smash things up. And therein lies one of my few complaints with this program: the name. When things are broke, I fix them. Smashing to me implies you want to break the thing up to get rid of it. Alas, Insider Software took another interpretation of Smash—to smash and get rid of the problem. How do you make a font better? You smash it!

Note: Smasher can be considered a companion program to FontAgent Pro. There is a new release of FontAgent Pro version 4 and that review can be read here.]

So, what is Smasher and what does it do? Simply, Smasher has two functions...well, two and a half I guess. But the main two are to (1) provide an easy mechanism to delete the various font caches on your computer, and (2) prepare font files for better integration into any Font Management program. The remaining "half" is that you can look at the basic characters of a font without having to install it in the computer or in a Font Management program.

Unfortunately, starting the program doesn't really tell you much. The interface is a bit confusing in that it doesn't provide that many clues as to what you are going to do with Smasher. When you open Smasher, you get a small, unassuming window with some icons on the top.

The far right icon—called "Caches"—is fairly straightforward, as are the dynamics of what you do with it and how. Either way, the main issue of the font cache is subtle, but extremely important; if there is any corruption in a font cache, then anything that depends on the data from that cache is prone to "issues" (read: strange crashes, weird responses, inconsistent behaviors—a (sort of) possessed nature to your computer). Now, if you can point to one application that doesn't depend on font caches to some or any degree, I'll personally give you a copy of Smasher. If any program displays text, uses text, works with text, has any menus, or windows with text, it's relying on some font cache somewhere in your system.

If there is a corrupt font cache in your computer, you might not have any specific clues as to what's causing problems.

Below, you see that when you click on the Caches icon you get an option to "Smash" a variety of different font caches on your computer. If you do not have (say) any Adobe products on your computer, there's no reason to Smash it as well (but it doesn't hurt either). Either way, there are a variety of options as to what you can select. On the other hand, there may be reasons why you want to leave a specific font cache "unsmashed," so processed as you so see fit. For what it's worth, since I'm going to have to restart my computer regardless, I smash any relevant cache and get it over with.

The whole dynamic of font Caches is fortunately very straightforward and very simple to do. But the rest of Smasher is a bit of a strange place to be.

The far left icon is used to add items to the window. The questions are what do I add, why do I add it, and what do I do with it once I get it there? In short, Smasher lets you take old font suitcases and break them open (okay, smash them open) to extract the font styles into separate font files (I'll explain in a bit why this is a good thing). Also, Smasher lets you take dFonts and convert (er, Smash) them into TrueType fonts.

Back in the early days of the Macintosh, font styles were placed in font suitcases. Within a Postscript type 1 font suitcase you'd have the Postscript outline file and various multiple point sizes to show up as an okay looking bitmapped version of that font in different sizes. Thus, you'd have sizes 8, 9, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 24, 36, and perhaps even more. These were all contained within a font suitcase. Then, if you had different styles, you have a suitcase each for the Roman, Bold, Italic and Bold Italic version of the font. Later, when TrueType fonts arrived, the same format was followed by placing each of the font styles (Roman, Bold, Italic, and Bold Italic) into a font Suitcase. While this made it easier to maintain (one font suitcase instead of four font files), it also made it a bit of a nuisance if you wanted to include just a bold style of one font with a file for creating a PDF or send off to a service bureau, but had to include the full lot of font styles of a given font because they were all in the same Suitcase. Similar problems arose if you only wanted to use (say) Times-Bold and didn't want or need to open the other three styles in your font management program.

Below, I've added my Font Folder from my System 9 Font folder. You see all of the font suitcases. Contained in one is the TrueType font Verdana, and contained therein are the four font styles. If there were one font I didn't want to Smash, I could click on it (or Control-click on any other font suitcase to get more than one) and click on the "Remove" icon. Once I had the ones I wanted to Smash, I select them all (Command-a or shift click from the first to the last) and click on the "Smash" icon.

Rather than "doing something" right off, Smasher first opens a Finder window that lets you select where you want the Smashed files to end up. If you already have a waiting folder, you can select that or create a new one as needed. Then press okay. That's when you need to quickly grab for your "mute" button on your keyboard because Smasher will give a very loud "smashing" noise. The good news is that this can be turned off for subsequent smashing in the Preferences.

If there are any fonts that cannot be smashed for whatever reason, a sheet will drop from the top of the window explaining what happened. If you click on "Save," this information will be saved as a text document in the same folder as your smashed fonts.

So, what do you get when you do all this? On my Desktop I created a folder called System 9 fonts and placed the results there. Below you see a Palatino folder containing the font collection Palatino containing a folder for each style. Not a Suitcase in site.

The Preview icon drops or raises the Preview window from the bottom of the Smasher window. To me, one of the big failures of just about every Font Management program is that they do not let you see the characters of a font until you install the font. If you already know what you are getting, that may be fine, but on occasion you do not and it's nice to see what you are installing before you install the font. Apple's Font Book is good for this, and Smasher provides one more option, albeit a rather limited one.

As seen below, you are limited to viewing only the upper and lower case letters and all numbers. You are not shown any punctuation, dingbats, or any other characters. There is no option to set which characters can be seen. The only variable is to change the size of the characters.

One quirk of Smasher is that if you click on a given font style, that font style will linger in the Preview window until another specific and viable font face is selected. That's why if you look at the second image above, I have all of the fonts selected but the Verdana-Italic is still showing in the Preview window.

Before I forget, earlier I mentioned the loud "Smashing" noise one hears when smashing a font. When one selects "About Smasher" from the Smasher menu, the first few bars of the "Anvil Chorus" from Verdie's "Il Trovatore" play out in a nice loud stream. Fortunately, this, like the Smashing sound, can be turned off in the Preferences.

Admittedly, not everyone is taking their documents to a service bureau and not everyone is needing to convert their dFonts to TrueType fonts. And if you do need to convert your font suitcases into separate font files, once you've done that, then what? Well, at a minimum, there is the need to occasionally dump (er, Smash) your font caches. There are other programs that do that, but at least Smasher does specifically deal not only with the font caches of your operating system, but also the font caches of various specific programs that create font caches of their own. And, when it gets right down to it, that's probably the most important thing that Smasher provides.

I do have to say that when I received Smasher and FontAgent Pro, I started getting a series of crashes. I smashed all my font cache,s and that seems to have cleared up the problem. I can't say for sure if this was orchestrated by Smasher or just that these programs are more sensitive to the issues (canary in a bird cage, anyone?). Suffice it to say that as a reviewer, I am constantly installing and uninstalling software, and it's not surprising that a cache somewhere on my computer has gone a bit wonky.

If you have read my reviews over the years, you know I'm big on computer maintenance. Like changing oil, it's better to prevent problems before they become problems. Smasher can be part of your oil-changing set of operations.

What I'd like to see in Smasher to make it more of a general tool is for Insider Software to put more controls into the Preview part of the program. As I said earlier, you can see a non-installed font, but you can only see a very limited range of the available characters. I'd like much more control on what can be seen. There are a number of free fonts available on the web, and surprisingly, some of them are worth what you pay for them. Some are just done poorly and some do not have critical characters—but you do not know that until you install it. Smasher could be a tool in letting you know that ahead of time, but not now.

If you do a lot with fonts, depend on fonts, and have a lot of fonts (I have over 3,000 in my computer as I write this), than you could probably use Smasher. If you are having strange problems on your computer, than you may need Smasher. The good news is that if you have another Insider Software program, like FontAgent Pro, you can get Smasher for about $25, and that's a good deal.

___________ Gary Coyne has been a scientific glassblower for over 30 years. He's been using Macs since 1985 (his first was a fat Mac) and has been writing reviews of Mac software and hardware since 1995.