ScanFont 4 is a great font utility that will help font designers to import their ideas with and and with almot no fuss. One thing I learned when tinkering with this app is that it is not a true stand alone application as I had thought it would be. One expects that from something that costs you $100.
Instead, it works along with FontLab (or TypeTool). The benefits that this little utility give you are great ones, but in my opinion it would be better if this application was just merged into FontLab itself.
Some other things that I found lacking was the documentation. It took me a few hours of trial and error to learn how to flawlessly export a graphic with white space in it as a single glyph instead of separate ones. Once in FontLab you will have to cut and paste the output to the proper characters. If there is a way to do this automatically, I haven't found it yet.
Even with the faults I found with this application and the huge price for something that does actually make fonts itself as a stand alone, I found it extremely useful. If future updates make the process even simpler and even give the option to export actual fonts, then it will move up on my chart. Until then, it does garner very high marks for what it does. If you own FontLab or TypeTool already then I would suggest investing into this if you make dingbat fonts or make fonts from sketches. If you don't already own the programs mentioned I would shy away from it as there is no way to actually output your work as a font from what I could see.
UPDATE: With the advent of Panther it seems that this product now no longer works in OSX. You can still use it if booted in Classic though. The developers were contacted months ago about this and said a fix was on the way, but yet none has shown. Because of this it drops from 5 apples to 1 apple until it is compatable with Panther.
UPDATE #2: Due to the emails of a loyal citizen of MacNation it has been found that the culprit for ScanFont crashing is the way that Panther treats it's fonts. If you have any "bad" fonts in your system then FL products will not load. I am now putting the rating back with one apple taken off (for a total of 4) due to the fact that SF isn't truly Panther ready.
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