Altsys
Encyclopedia
Altsys Corporation was a Texas
-based software company founded by James R Von Ehr II. It was an early Apple Macintosh developer and publisher.
Three major products from Altsys for PC / Macintosh and NeXT were:
Altsys' best known product that was basically rebranded Virtuoso, that was licensed to Aldus Corporation under FreeHand name, was a vector drawing program that competed with Adobe Illustrator. It was published for many years, originally only on the Macintosh, then also for Microsoft Windows
. When Aldus was acquired by Adobe, the licensing agreement that Altsys had with Aldus precluded FreeHand from being part of the deal, so the publishing rights reverted back to Altsys. Altsys also published Metamorphosis for Macintosh, a font utility.
Altsys was acquired by Macromedia
in January, 1995. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0NEW/is_1994_Oct_28/ai_16187517 Von Ehr became a major Macromedia shareholder and joined the Macromedia board of directors.
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
-based software company founded by James R Von Ehr II. It was an early Apple Macintosh developer and publisher.
Three major products from Altsys for PC / Macintosh and NeXT were:
- FontographerFontographerFontographer , is a software application used to create digital fonts, available for both Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh platforms. It was originally developed by Altsys but is now owned by FontLab Ltd.-Fontastic:...
for Windows and Mac OS - font editor - Font-O-Matic for Windows - font transformer
- Virtuoso for Windows NT and NeXT / OpenSTEP- vector editor
Altsys' best known product that was basically rebranded Virtuoso, that was licensed to Aldus Corporation under FreeHand name, was a vector drawing program that competed with Adobe Illustrator. It was published for many years, originally only on the Macintosh, then also for Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
. When Aldus was acquired by Adobe, the licensing agreement that Altsys had with Aldus precluded FreeHand from being part of the deal, so the publishing rights reverted back to Altsys. Altsys also published Metamorphosis for Macintosh, a font utility.
Altsys was acquired by Macromedia
Macromedia
Macromedia was an American graphics and web development software company headquartered in San Francisco, California that produced such products as Flash and Dreamweaver. Its rival, Adobe Systems, acquired Macromedia on December 3, 2005 and controls the line of Macromedia...
in January, 1995. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0NEW/is_1994_Oct_28/ai_16187517 Von Ehr became a major Macromedia shareholder and joined the Macromedia board of directors.
External links
- Altsys Metamorphosis Apple Inc. support article, circa 1990
- Softbase - lists whole Altsys software line for Windows