I use a program many of you are probably already familiar with called DeskEngrave. It's free and easy to use, it uses fonts already installed on your computer and exports them in dxf or gcode. I do all my drawing in CAD so not sure how or if this will work with the folks primarily using SVGs. Additional fonts are easily downloaded and installed from dafont.com . Thais program makes it really easy for me to put words on a radius and quickly switch between different fonts with a preview window so I can pick which font looks better for a project.
http://www.deskam.com/deskengrave.html
There is also a program called stickfont which I've used on rare occasion to make open line fonts.