What no love for your fellow Texan Steve? How do we get on as a beta "texter"? Sorry couldn't resist.
As to your embroidery question, yes they are to an extent. Lets say I digitized your fonts to be used as a typable font in the embroidery program(which I can do and have done for Wilcom programs). You would have a min and max height that it could be used due to the nature of thread, but you would be able to use it like you would any other font within the embroidery program, it won't be accessed by other programs though, just the embroidery program.
What you have probable seen is people individually digitized the font for a specific use, but it wouldn't be a font in the sense that I am talking about.
Also, the Wilcom font extension is .ese, that isn't used by all the embroidery software though, only Wilcom. Brother has their own extension, Pulse, Wings etc. Wilcom just happens to be one of the most used 3rd party commercial software.