FontLab

FontLab

FontLab is both the name of a company, FontLab Ltd, and the former name of their flagship font editor product, now called FontLab Studio. Since the early 2000s, FontLab Studio has been the dominant software tool for commercial/retail digital font development. This is partly because the once-dominant Fontographer by Altsys ceased development after its acquisition by Macromedia. During Macromedia's merger/acquisition by Adobe Systems in 2005, Macromedia sold Fontographer's rights and code to FontLab Ltd, so FontLab now owns and maintains both of the most popular font editing/development tools.

History

Originally, there were two separate companies. SoftUnion Ltd of St. Petersburg, Russia made the software, under lead programmer Yuri Yarmola. Pyrus North America Ltd, of the USA was formed in 1992 to distribute and market FontLab 2.0 for Microsoft Windows, which came out in 1993 (there was no Mac OS version at the time). Eventually Pyrus bought all the rights to FontLab; hired Mr. Yarmola; and renamed the company. Today they have a wide range of font editing and conversion tools. Programming is still done by a Russian team in St. Petersburg, and management is mainly in Panama, where the company is incorporated.Fact|date=September 2008

FontLab's first Mac OS product was FontLab 3 for Mac, in 1998. Since then, FontLab (now FontLab Studio) has been issued for both Mac and Windows, but the Windows versions usually come out first, by six months to a year. In addition, Fontlab has developed spinoff font editors for specific markets. TypeTool, a stripped down version of FontLab Studio, is quite inexpensive and serves as an entry level typeface editor which is popular with students, hobbyists, and those whose typographic needs are relatively simple. AsiaFont Studio, on the other hand, is probably the most sophisticated font editor in the world and can create and edit fonts with up to 64,000 characters. It has special features for editing Chinese, Japanese and Korean fonts.

Back when fonts came in different formats and were platform specific Fontlab also began to create a line of font conversion utilities. ScanFont, a tool for converting scans/bitmaps of glyphs into vector glyphs/fonts was part of FontLab 2. But in the next version it was split off and became its own more complete and powerful application. Next came TransType, a font converter for moving fonts between TrueType, OpenType and Type 1 formats and between Macintosh and Windows platforms. A few more specialized font converters followed: FONmaker, for converting vector fonts into bitmaps; FontFlasher, for converting vector fonts into pixelated fonts for lo-res display; and FogLamp, for converting native Fontographer files into modern formats.

Products

* FontLab Studio (formerly FontLab) [http://www.fontlab.com/font-editor/fontlab-studio/] - font editor for professional type designers
* Fontographer [http://www.fontlab.com/font-editor/fontographer/] - font editor for graphic designers, artists, publishers
* TypeTool [http://www.fontlab.com/font-editor/typetool/] - font editor for students, hobbyists, users with minor editing needs
* AsiaFont Studio (formerly FontLab Composer) [http://www.fontlab.com/font-editor/asiafont-studio/] - font editor for professional typeface designers of CJKV or other Unicode fonts

* Photofont [http://www.photofont.com/] - a technology/format for creating bitmap fonts with color, texture and transparency and using them in page layout and website design
* SigMaker [http://www.fontlab.com/font-utility/sigmaker/] - a simple utility for adding a single character to a TrueType font
* TransType [http://www.fontlab.com/font-converter/transtype/] - font converter for Macintosh and Windows; OpenType, TrueType and Type 1
* Bitfonter [http://www.fontlab.com/font-editor/bitfonter/] - bitmap font editor
* ScanFont [http://www.fontlab.com/font-converter/scanfont/] (Mac version is now a plug-in for FontLab Studio rather than a stand-alone application)
* FONmaker [http://www.fontlab.com/font-converter/fonmaker/] - a font converter that makes bitmap fonts from TrueType fonts
* FontFlasher [http://www.fontlab.com/font-converter/fontflasher/] - a font converter that optimizes fonts for display at small sizes and low resolution
* FogLamp [http://www.fontlab.com/font-converter/foglamp/] - a font converter that converts native .fog files into several different modern formats

HowTos

* [http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/FontLab Wikibooks: FontLab]

External links

* [http://www.fontlab.com FontLab Ltd web site]
* [http://www.fontlab.com/font-editor/fontlab-studio/ FontLab Studio product page]


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Нужен реферат?

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Fontlab — Studio Entwickler Fontlab Ltd. Aktuelle Version 5.0.4 (Build 2741) (2007) Betriebssystem Mac OS, Mac OS X, Windows Kategorie Schrifteditor …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Fontographer — Infobox Software name = Fontographer caption = Fontographer developer = FontLab Ltd. latest release version = 4.1.5/Windows, 4.7.3/Mac latest release date = release date and age|2006|3|31 operating system = Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X genre =… …   Wikipedia

  • Font editor — A font editor is a class of application software specifically designed to create or modify computer font files. Font editors differ greatly depending if they are designed to edit bitmap fonts or outline fonts. Modern font editors mostly deal with …   Wikipedia

  • Fontographer — Entwickler Fontlab Ltd. Aktuelle Version 5.0 (Juni 2010) Betriebssystem Mac OS X, Windows Kategorie Schrifteditor Lizenz …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • OpenType — Filename extension .otf, .ttf Type code OTTO Uniform Type Identifier public.opentype font Developed by Microsoft Adobe Systems Latest release 1.6 …   Wikipedia

  • OpenType — Desarrollador Microsoft y Adobe Systems Información general Extensión de archivo .otf, .ttf Type code …   Wikipedia Español

  • Typeface — Font family redirects here. For the CSS property, see Font family (HTML). For the Marvel Comics antihero, see Typeface (comics). For the documentary film, see Typeface (film). A Specimen, a broadsheet with examples of typefaces and fonts… …   Wikipedia

  • Andrew Ashton — (born 1971 in England) is a book designer and illustrator. He is a Philosophy graduate (University of London) and joined Mensa International in 1992. He began his career in publishing at Kogan Page, the leading UK independent business publisher,… …   Wikipedia

  • Fontographer — Software de: FontLab Plataforma: Windows y Macintosh Usado para: Creación de fuentes …   Wikipedia Español

  • Eudcedit — Schrifteditoren, fachsprachlich auch Font Editoren (von englisch Font, „Schrift“), sind Computerprogramme zur Erzeugung und Bearbeitung von Schriftarten zur Benutzung auf dem Computer. Während in der Vergangenheit hauptsächlich Bitmap Schriften… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”