Greg: It would be a different object type, so you'd have to recreate them, sorry.
The rewrite won't be for quite a while and the current SpriteFont seems stable enough, as far as desktop support is concerned. As long as you aren't exporting to CocoonJS and AppMobi, the current SpriteFont should be fine. But if you want to target those as well... well, you are in for a long wait. Don't hold your breath :)