A new release of the FDK, AFDKO 2.5, has been posted at:
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/opentype/afdko/
This release finally brings the FDK tools fully up to par with the OpenType specification. The most notable new features are that the FDK now fully supports all GSUB and GPOS lookup categories, and can apply the feature file directives to TTF source fonts to build TTF fonts with OpenType layout tables. The power of the FDK command-line tools can now be applied to building fonts for all scripts, including complex scripts such as Arabic and Indic.
AFDKO 2.5 also supports several of the newer OpenType features: user-friendly names for stylistic set features, and expanded lookup flag settings for use with mark classes. In addition, for CJK fonts, the tools now support Ideographic Variation Sequences (IVSes).
If you're someone who builds or tests fonts, please try it out! (Installation is now working better as well, and there is a command file for Windows that avoids the earlier need to edit environment variables). Note that the AFDKO is tools are all command-line based, and and require some willingness to get technical.
- Read Roberts
In addition to thanking Read for his hard work and effort in getting this new release out-the-door and into the hands of font developers, I feel obliged to point out that these are the same tools that we in Type Development at Adobe Systems use to develop our OpenType fonts.