Kerning and tracking are the most common tasks in typography, yet we have to deal with tiny archaic interfaces in pretty much all apps out there.
You already have a rotation tool that's good for getting the values into the ballpark fast and edit details later. Kerning and tracking don't have anything like that.
What I'm suggesting is head-up display options added to the regular tools. I made a mockup (attached) of the art text tool to better illustrate that idea. Ideally the regular tools would have a small button (a blue '+' maybe) that lets you add that specific controller to the HUD of the related tool(s). Everybody has different needs and this would speed up workflows without having things present that the user may not need.