Fontforge does support grayscale bitmaps. However be prepared to encounter some bugs, as the feature seems to be rarely used, so that the developer doesn't pay very much attention to it.

Fontforge seems to support bdf, but I didn't find support for grayscale bdf, yet.

Thank you, I'll have another go at it.

When you add a bitmap strike to a fontforge file, you can specify the desired bit depth. For example, adding 19@8 to the list of strikes will produce a 19 pixels bitmap with 256 shades of gray.

BTW fontforge allows to generate various bitmap formats, not just BDF. I actually think TTF with embedded bitmaps may be better for your purposes.

Fontlab’s Photofont does what I want and more (e.g. full color), but it requires plugins, as it is a non-standard format.
At this point it may be as "standard" as anything related to bitmap fonts. If there was a better way, I think they would be doing it. What specific OS and OS version were you planning to use? What applications?

Grayscale bitmaps is a part of the standard TrueType/OpenType specification. If they meet someone's requirements, then there is just no need to look for something more special. I think Photofont is intended for more complicated tasks.

anagnost: so, i managed to get 8bit bdf's out of fontforge (yey!). Thing is, ttf's don't work ("no glyphs were exported"). Photofont, I agree, it's to fancy for this.

canderson: the font is intended as a "gift" of sorts for a friend. It's his handwriting. It will be used mostly on macs, with as many apps as possible (i.e. not necessarily meant for print). I'd like to us it in Adobe Flash too (not sIFR).

At this point I'm really heading for vector.