EKey-
I 100% agree that height and font should stay as type definitions - and that Acad style text is a no-no. What I am fighting against is that I currently have 10 different "types" of 3/32 Arial fonts just to accommodate opacity vs transparency and leader heads. Add in boxed or not boxed to that and you'd have 20 different text styles in your project. Of all those types, one single type (opaque, not boxed, arrowhead leader) is used 95% of the time, but I still have to wade through all the text styles constantly each time I use a different type.
What would be much more efficient would be for the currently type defined items of boxed, opacity, leader head to be made as "defaults on creation" but be free to be changed like instance parameters after creation. So now I just would have one text type for 3/32 Arial text with 15 degree arrows, opaque background and no box as its defaults. Each time text was created using that style, that would be the result until I chose to change the leader style post-creation as an instance parameter.
I envision having only a handful of text styles in the project to choose from - 1/8" Arial, 3/32" Arial, 1/4" Arial and that's all. Super efficient. The slowdown would only occur every once and a while when I have to change a leader or opacity after creation of some text via an instance parameter. I'll gladly take a slow process once or twice a day for a speedier process with less template bloat the rest of the time.
This same problem exists with tags. How many different tag types must be created to have a transparent and opaque version with 3 different leader types and boxed options? 12. What if you also want left, right and center justification for those tags - now you have 36 different types OF THE EXACT SAME TAG....of which 33 or 34 may only be used once or twice per project. And I have people constantly asking "which tag type is the correct one to use....". Obviously I am exaggerating the problem there, but i have seen 10 variations of the same tag before in a project.