Okay just as a follow up.... this was a nightmare. I'm not blaming anyone in any way, but man, this was a fight.
The project no longer offers builds, which means you have to compile for yourself. As someone who knows only the basics of Linux I was stumped at every turn. As someone who figured out a lot about Linux along the way, I was still highly perplexed and annoyed at how inacurate (or perhaps outdated) all the "how to's" were, and how vague a lot of the information is. CGYWIN is a great.....and disasterous incarnation.
Anyway, enough ranting. I just wanted to point out to anyone reading this three things:
1) This is currently the only way to do this for free. Otherwise you can either pay for a font editing tool, or edit each character one at a time. I could not find one free (windows) font editor that let you modify groups of glyphs at once.
2) If you want to do the same thing I needed...forget trying to compile your own. It's easier to find an old computer and install Linux. Then run Fontforge natively from there. Bring the fonts back to the PC when you're done.
3) After I finally got the program running (by combining the information from 4 how-to's) I opened a font and italicized with ease. I then saved it under a new name. However when I tried to install, I got a corrupt font error. ...so the moral is learn more about fonts and font formats before attempting this.
I'm off now....to read up on fonts and font formats.

PS. JJJ - you were so right, the new version is miles ahead of 1.3. It solved most of my other issues save one. But that is another post.