FontAgent Pro developer Insider Software on Monday introduced Smasher 1.5, a new version of their font management utility that now can automatically fix font problems that can cause garbled text. Smasher 1.5 costs $49.95.
Smasher 1.5 lets you view all fonts in a suitcase, including “legacy” font suitcases brought over from Mac OS 9. To “smash” a font suitcase, you drag the font into Smasher, then click the Smash button — Smasher then automatically creates new, more efficient suitcases. This way you can streamline font collections to only use those individual fonts you need for a project, rather than activating entire font families.
Smasher verifies basic font integrity to make sure they’re working okay, and keeps bitmap and printer fonts together to ensure proper printing and PDF generation. You can also convert dfonts into TrueType.
New in this release is a feature that lets you split font suitcases down to a single style level. A built-in setup tool lets you configure Smasher to automatically fix “common garbled-text problems” associated with Adobe Creative Suite applications, QuarkXPress, Microsoft Office and Mac OS X.
Smasher 1.5 requires Mac OS X v10.3 or later, 7MB RAM and 5MB storage space.