Certainly reinforce (1). I'm adding an AOT feature to DeskNotes, and again using a template to clone. Not a huge deal to do, but not as tidy as I'd like.
Re (2), yes, I'd like this, and the ability to set font etc. Would also like the IconX label backgrounds migrated over to DX. Positioning and rotation of labels relative to objects ... also good.
My biggie at the moment is a modular concept that would allow the equivalent of DX packs to be loaded and unloaded. This would lead to nice tidy development, and would allow users to have the functionality they want. I'd like this for my DeskNotes, but this is also something that came up in the conversation about Windows SideBar type objects.
I'm just generally interested at the moment to hear what if anything is planned for DX as it all seems a little quiet at the moment.