SmartWrap
Review

SmartWrap
Selznick Scientific Software
$18.00 shareware registration

Here’s a quick review of a small piece of software that performs a single task very, very well.

Do you often have text like this:

>The Unix foundation of OS X brings with
>it all the power
>and complexity of
>multiple users and account settings.

When what you want is:

“The Unix foundation of OS X brings with it all the power and complexity of multiple users and account settings.”
Do you need to re-wrap email text to eliminate quotation marks and hard carriage returns to get better control over your formatting? Do you need eliminate hard returns from text copied from word processors or Adobe Acrobat?

Selznick Scientific Software’s SmartWrap does this task quickly and efficiently. I get lots and lots of emails, and when I reply, Eudora 6 (my long-time favorite email application) inserts > marks before each line to indicate a quotation of the text that I am replying to. Moreover, the word wrap is usually incorrect.

SmartWrap instantly removes the quotation marks, and removes any hard carriage returns so the text will wrap appropriately.
SmartWrap, an $18 shareware application, comes in both OS X and OS 8/9 flavors. I tested the OS X version. Installation went quickly and uneventfully; a “SmartWrap” command appears in the Service menu. Eudora users can also install a SmartWrap plug-in that can accessed via the Eudora toolbar.

Paste affected text where you wish, choose “SmartWrap” from the Services menu (or Shift-Apple-A) and the text is de-quoted and de-carriage returned. That’s it!

I copied hard-wrapped text from PDF files, Microsoft Word files, and plain text. SmartWrap worked flawlessly all the time.
SmartWrap’s one drawback is that it’s a bit pricey for a single-task shareware application. But there’s lots to be said for a program that is well crafted, and does its job quickly, easily, and reliably.

MyMac Rating: 4