I inherited a ton of files from someone who apparently did not like to set up styles. If an edit comes in, and, for example, I have to add a new subhead, I have to go back and look at all the formatting of the subheads to create a new one, then make all those same choices, since there's no style sheet created. Would be great to just click on one of the existing subheads, click on a format painter icon, and click on the new type for the new type to take on the format of the existing type. I'm not a power INDD user, and I understand the value of styles, but sometimes a Format Painter option would be super useful.

I would like more control over the space insets in the paragraph shading options. When a long paragraph of text flow on to the next page there is no way to control the spacing above (padding) when we're in the middle of the paragraph and "clip to frame" is checked. It is possible to get away with it if the distance from the top-margin and the first baseline is sufficient, but most of the time I want more space. I think it would be better if the text was forced down to the second baseline if necessary. The end goal is to have the same amount of space above the text where the shaded paragraph starts and where it continues on the next page. This looks better. See the attached file.

Currently, if you have Number of Recent Fonts to Display set to anything but zero (0), recent fonts appear at the font drop down list, but the drop down starts at the top of the fonts list no matter what your current font is.

If I am just wanting the next or previous font in the list from the font I am currently using, I now have to scroll all the way down to that font. When the Number of Recent Fonts to Display is set to zero (0), when the drop down is selected, it is positioned at the font you are currently using instead of the top of the list. This is preferable.

Can you combine these actions. When there is a recent fonts list, the drop down should be at the current font being used in the text that is selected.

This is something CorelDraw does and has done for years. Here's to hoping this would be an easy programming issue. Otherwise, I will not use that feature due to the amount of scrolling that needs to be done to get to the current font, or any other font I want to get that is not right at the top.

I am constantly making catalogs and the proofing process is arduous because we always have to read through text to check for spelling errors, grammar mistakes, etc. If there was a way to create one Master text file (whether it’s an InDesign, Word, Excel doc, etc) and link it to any document, have one or more people edit it, have it update across the board and not override any local changes would be fantastic. Now, I know there are extensions you can use, such as DocsFlow and WordFlow, but the problem with these is that you cannot choose specific text from the Google doc you want to sync over to InDesign. For example:
I make a page in InDesign about jewelry. On the page, there are multiple separate text boxes about the different types of jewelry. If I have a file in Google docs that has descriptions about our various types of jewelry and sync it over, I’m not able to choose the exact description (paragraph) that I need to go in an InDesign text box. I can't have that. What I need is one Master text file with details about the content for every product we have, that can be synced over to InDesign. But I need to be able to CHOOSE exactly what text I want to sync over to one text box. If I have a bunch of different paragraphs on one Google doc and sync it over, it puts everything in that Google doc into one text box. I'm sure you can see the problem here.
Now, I have found a way around this by using cross referencing, but I can only do one paragraph at a time, and if one paragraph happens to be a line, such as a subheading, I will have to go back in again and choose the next paragraph of text. This is time consuming and I want to make this as efficient as possible.
I think this features should be able to take one Master (again, could be an InDesign, Word, or Excel doc), link it to an INDD file, update it both ways while a designer and editor are working on it at the same time, keep local edits, notify people about conflicting changes, choose EXACTLY what I need from the Master, and use whatever styles and fonts I wish in the local document that won’t be lost when the files are synced/updated.
I hope that made sense. But I think a feature like this would be beneficial for everyone!

A Kerning Editor would fit nicely into the kerning feature, which allows to choose between optical, metrical kerning. The user would define his own kerning names.
The Kerning Editor has a GUI which allows the user to define his own kerning pairs which override the metrical ones defined in the font's kerning tables. There I can load the metrical kerning or the optical kerning as a start for my individual kerning.
Furthermore the new Kerning Editor has two more tokens/glyphs to kern with: the left and the right margin of a text frame. So the user can define his own margin alignment set, separately for every glyph in the font.

Since the EULA's of all font companies are very strict to not alter any part of a purchaced font, it would be very, very useful to manually change the predefined kerning of a font inside an InDesgin document, so you don't have to worry about kerning any more. The optical kerning method is cool, but often enough it provides not the best alternative to the metrical kerning.
Furthermore the optical margin alignment should be better worked out. The user should not depend on an algorithm, but should be able to decide, which glyph goes out how far beyond the textbox border.
(There is a competitive layout program which has this feature since v3.x ...)