Hi Tim, just to answer your second question first:

> Secondarily, for some reason the text tool isn't able to recognize
> things you type into it fresh, I have to close the tool and reopen
> it for the text to appear properly in the 3D views.

There is a bug where it can fail to recognize the very first keystroke that you type in, but it should then kick in and work properly on the second and subsequent keystrokes.

So for the moment, a workaround is to type in an extra character and then hit backspace, please let me know if that does not work for you.

I'll see if I can fix up the "first keystroke" bug - it is actually a bug in Windows that I have to work around, but I should be able to work around it.

- Michael