Agreed, Mike, certainly the tool set in Type Tool is different than Xara. It's much like Illustrator, though, expecially the need for three different tools to define a control point (also called a knot, an anchor, and a node, depending on the software company).

First, you can import AI files to a character window in TT, so you can indeed use Xara to build your characters (albeit one by one); you just export one character per Xara page as an Illustrator (*.AI) file, and make sure all your paths are combined because fonts can only have one path, although several joined subpaths are indeed allowed.

Me, I prefer to design in Xara—the tools are simply quicker, and more than make up for the time spent exporting. Accuracy and detail I gain by using Xara.

However—Here's a slightly annotated cheat sheet of Type Tools 3's tool set. It's big brother FontLab has a few more tools, but not $300 more!

Click image for larger version.  Name: tools.png  Views: 162  Size: 19.6 KB  ID: 88177


Remember to right-click when you use the pointer thing tool; TT is context sensitive and you got options with every tool. Be careful right-clicking directly over a control point, though. I think that's the shortcut gesture for deleting the underlying control point.

—g