Thanks to everyone who sent Alan coins, stamps, and emails in response to my begging. He really appreciates it!
Spiro
I've tentatively chosen a name for my curve editor: Spiro. I posted a "code escape" here and on the Typophile forums. So far, I've gotten little or no response from my posting here, but lots of people checking it out and sending feedback on the Typophile board. Interestingly, many of the commenters are encouraging me to patent the idea and/or otherwise try to make money off it.
I'll have a new code snapshot soon. In the meantime I've been tracing the miniscules from 72pt metal Centaur (see screenshot). There's nothing like trying to use the thing for real to point out what needs improving :)
There's no rush, as I'm still tweaking the core algorithms, but obviously this is something that should go into other free software applications, most especially Inkscape. What I'm most inclined to do is release all the core code as GPL, package up nice Win32 and MacOS versions with refined GUI's (especially cut'n'paste with the dominant apps on those platforms) as commercial apps, and also try to license the code for inclusion in proprietary apps. We'll see how all that plays out.