MS Sans Serif kerning issue

I took bitmapped MS Sans Serif straight from Windows 95 and then converted it into something Linux could actually use as a font via Fontforge. On Debian 10 - no issues, everything is exactly how it was in Win95. But on Debian 11, letters would stick to each other. See pic:
Apparently it's because of the new Pango font rendering that GTK uses. It's been an issue for at least two years, and it doesn't look like they are gonna do anything about it.
So I did the only thing left - create a new bitmapped font in Fontforge and re-trace every symbol from scratch. Now letters no longer stick to each other, just like before, but now there is another problem - the "new" font doesn't have a bold version (or italic for that matter).
Interestingly, when I converted .fon bitmapped font into usable .ttf following the instructions, it already had Bold and Italic version. How would one get Fontforge to show them, so I can add them to my "new" font?