Or at least ignorant. I’m trying to change the top line of the letters T and F from a straight line to a curve. The font is shadowed, and I also need to move the shadowing lines a tiny bit further away from the basic letters. Unfortunately, the manual and help files require a certain level of basic terminology knowledge which I don’t have. Being real ignorant, and not having a list of definitions (of things like curve, vector, etc.) I don’t have a clue how to do this. Help. 
If you switch to points mode, you can edit the contours. A shadow or outline font will have an outer black (clockwise) contour, and an inner white (anticlockwise) contour. Both need to be edited to match.
The screen shot should explain enough to get you started.
Aha. Would I use the same technique to move shadow lines a bit away from the letters? Then, since I can’t save it in the trial version, how can I get it into my computer to print something out and see how it looks in real life? Quite frankly, I don’t want to buy the whole thing if it turns out my results end up as pathetic as I fear they might.
You can preview your changes in the Font Test window. To print it out, take a screen shot and print it from an image editor like IrfanView.
Or within the Test window press the Print icon.
Am I right in thinking that to move shadowing lines a bit further away from the basic letter (I’m playing around with Algerian, by the way) , I will have to break each one down into specific straight lines and curves and then move them one at a time, reassembling them where I want the new one to be? Or is there some way to tell the system to let me drag an entire line, even though it is made up of a bunch of different curves and straight lines?
You can select multiple nodes — both off-curve and on-curve nodes that comprise an entire line (or several lines), then drag them together.
Use marquee select to drag around nodes with the mouse, or the lasso select tool. Hold shift and click to add individual nodes to the selection, or shift click selected nodes to remove them from the selection.
Drag with the mouse, holding shift to constrain movement, or use the cursor keys to move the nodes by 10 funits in any direction. Hold down Shift to move them by 100 funits, or hold down Ctrl to move them by 1 funit.