I very often create designs where I should have certain x-height.
Now I have to achieve this using long workaround (I do it very quick now, but now quick enough, and its not actionable):
1. Create copy of typed text with Ctrl+C, Ctrl+F
2. Outlining copy
3. Finding symbol with flat top an bottom (x or X or similar)
4. Choose Direct selection tool
5. Shift+click chosen letter
6. Deleting unwanted symbols from copy
7. Scale outline of chosen letter 1000%
8. Going outline mode (enlarged letter will probably take whole screen)
9. Shift+click at live text behind letter
10. Set desired x/cap-height as height of selected art multiplied ten times
11. Shift+click live text
12. Delete outlined symbol
13. Exit outline mode
Thirteen steps!
While there could be expandable fields in Character palette only where users could type desired height and apply it, because both ratios are written within the font, as far as I informed.
There is WR-captialSize script by Wolfgang Reszel which can help with this, but the feature from the box would be better.

Aligning to an object on another arboard would be really great + needed, for AI users.

In addition to functions like, align to key object and select/edit similar shapes,
It would be so so great to be abled to align an object, to another object, on another artboard!

In short:
Aligning objects to the position of other objects on other artboards.
Without having to move objects to the same artboard 1st, or copy their x/y values, just for alignment.

Some thoughts/notes:

Implementation,
With artboard rules activated, of course. This seems to be a similar function to the ones that exist: Like the align to key object option and the align to artboard option. I can Imagine it would take relatively little coding to implement this. Though, what to gain from this feature would be very much worth it.

Scenario, where this is needed,
When working with multiple artboards, often I need to cut and past objects to align them to another artboard, and back. Just to align them to of an object over there. Many ways to rome of course. But all vary from being time consuming task that need to be repeated to often, to actually causing faults in documents.
Other ways, for example:
Cutting and pasting the object that needs to be aligned, to the artboard containing the object that needs alignment / vice versa.
Cutting and pasting X and Y values.
Using the select/edit similar object (if similar).

In the end, all available options are time consuming actions that can even cause faults.
Examples of faults: values ending up within positions in the artwork, that might be missed and actually end up in your client corrections feedback. Even if you are super precise, within large documents, a more reliable option would be welcome for this task. Other examples, cutting and pasting, taking extra actions/time to lock and unlock other layers, or having object ending up in the wrong layers, causing ..more actions.

Efficiency, user experience, workflow/time,
All of the mentioned examples of faults that can happen, can off course (if you know your basics well) be prevented. But I think anybody who does work wit AI often, would agree this task could work much more intuitive. There are so many details to it, that make this simple task, you execute so often, very unpractical, and to comprehensive.

Select/edit similar shapes, is often not the option that works out:
- What if (this is many times), the object needing to be aligned is not similar and/or not on the same artboard.
- Or even when similar: often the key object that is positioned right, was moved already (the creation process is not entirely planned ahead). In that case new problems arise, that could all be resolved simply. A great solution would be to to select one of those, align it to an object on another artboard.
Examples:
Other objects on other artboards, that are similar, still need to be aligned to that one.
- Select/edit similar objects does not work in combination with selecting an object that you want to align them to.
- If they are all in scattered positions, editing the position of these similar objects by moving a key object, moves them all accordingly, but keeps them scattered, instead of aligned.
- So.. they will ALL need to be either replaced, or.. aligned ONE BY ONE..

I could go on.
I am a bad writer and not a native English speaker,
However, I hope this is a convincing case for both users and developers, that will be implemented.

:) Thanks for reading and kind regards!

Draw a pair of text areas side-by-side (e.g., a two-page spread). Link them and fill with placeholder text. Open the Tabs panel.

The Tabs panel wants to be the width of both columns if you click the "Position Panel above Text" magnet icon. This probably means that much of it is shooting off-screen in one direction or another, as I would typically zoom in to work with a single column of text at a time.

Go somewhere in the second area and type a line like:
"foo bar stuff"
with tabs between the words. My desire is to have the three words left, center, and right aligned with respect to their column. This is tricky given the way the Tabs panel wants to align to the text.

The panel should align and be sized to reflect the current text block (i.e., the text block containing the cursor), not all of the linked blocks.

Tabulations should be embedded in the tex box and appear only when you press on the box and disappears when you click somewhere else. By default, it should also resize and follow the tex box on screen at all time without requiring you to click on the magnet to put it back where it belong.

Also, the text options of Illustrator are lacking some very useful options that only exist in InDesign. I understand that Indesign is THE BIG SOFTWARE FOR TEXT, but honestly for smaller text oriented documents, I often use Illustrator because it's faster to operate. So, some features exclusive to InDesign should be ported to Illustrator like the possibility to create quick bullet points and to change the space between the border of the box and the text. Good job though for recently adding vertical alignement 😉 .