FontLab

FontLab is both the name of a company, Fontlab Ltd, Inc. 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.