We need better typography in Illustrator!

John, I don’t recall it working ever., and I never heard anything mentioned by the team. Will recheck though...
Yes, there are two options buried in the Align panel’s menu, Align to Glyph Bounds > Point / Area Text, but these only make Ai treat live text by their actual visible bounds, as if they were outlined. This is definitely not the thing requested, it’s almost the opposite of it :)

This used to work, but hasn't for a few years. I create computer keyboards as a job and need to align individual text boxes baselines to each other. No matter which combination of Area or Point Type, whether using "align to glyph bounds" or not, it doesn't work well. Please bring back this functionality.

I understand. I have worked on the customer screen and checked that it was the issue with the 28.4.1 and 27.7 versions of AI. I have informed my Product team about the same, and screenshots have been uploaded. Also, I have reset the preferences of Illustrator, but it is the same, and at my end, it is giving the same issue.
Also, a reference ticket has been created regarding the same regarding the same issue.

Yep, CorelDRAW allows to choose the first or the last baseline when aligning text.
Illustrator today can do these only interactively, with Snap to Glyph enabled, and only for point type objects (to avoid clutter) — or using even older methods witt outlined duplicates.
No way to enable anything in the Align panel and use buttons :(

I like the recent changes to Illustrator which adds font height options (such as sizing letters according to cap letter height) and the ability to align type objects by glyph bounds. But Illustrator really needs a straight-forward option to align or distribute type objects with other objects according to the type object's baseline. A couple of competing applications allow this option in their align/distribute palettes.

Currently the only solution for aligning type objects to other objects via the baseline is by manually moving the type objects and letting Smart Guides snap them into place. That process takes more time.

Hey, meanwhile Sergey Osokin wrote a free script that allows to align and distribute text objects based on their baselines!
https://github.com/creold/illustrator-scripts/blob/master/md/Text.md#aligntextbaseline

Yes, same problem here

My pleasure, John.
But I have to clarify again — it’s not the real solution to the topic of the report (which should be converted into a request).

See, without any of two Align to Glyph Bounds options checked Ai will align them using their 'Em Boxes', that it with the space for ascenders, descenders, side-bearings. The distribution and alignment worked in my example because these lines had the same font size.
If you make one type object larger — it won’t work like I demoed anymore, since 'boxes' are now of different sizes!

(the apps I use to record GIFs are www.cockos.com/licecap/ and blog.bahraniapps.com/gifcam/ — not an ad, just wanted to share)

Egor, thank you for the .gif (cool way to demo, by the way). I did not understand the technique. It does work for me. Thanks again, I can't tell you how much this helps me!

@John, @C, I can’t say it does not work for me.
On the contrary, the text objects (with or without prominent descenders) gets aligned and distributed as I expect them too.
Can you please record the way it works for you and compare with my GIFs below. Am I getting this wrong?

agree with C below, this still doesn't work. Win 11, Illustrator 27.4
Please understand how seriously this impacts my work. I am a (hardware) keyboard designer. I absolutely need to be able to have a group of text boxes spread horizontally across the artboard, line up so all of their baselines are on a precise line. Having to do this with smart guides, etc... is so hard, compared to how it used to work: select all, shift+select to set one as target, then align all. Please, please help us here!

OSX 13.0.1
Illustrator 27.1.1

JAN 23: still an issue. Align to Glyph only works if you are dragging an individual selection relative to another. If you select multiple text items and use any Align tool, the same wrong results. The Align tools ignore the Align to Glyph settings.

Jakob, can you check the state of new Align to Glyph Bounds in the Align panel’s menu? Is it on or off for you?

Text MUST be autoaligned on baseline not on spacing between ascender height and descender height. This missunderstanding of how text is to be aligned is insane! This worked perfectly in earlier versions.