Dear Gentlemen,
It is my experience with pre-press makes me doubt that Preferences are visited at all. Numerous times I was to instruct different pre-press folks to set colour polices in Photoshop Color Preferences correctly, to respect the embedded profiles - and they never knew before it was there.
We will keep 'Preferences' in FRV for time being, but I'm afraid it is obvious FRV is presumed to be a 'one-trick pony' piece of soft while it is far from that. In FRV we tried to reflect on everyday needs of raw shooters, including our own
A tool tip on XMP is rather complicated. First of all, XMP files we record contain up to 3 groups of image processing tags, orientation, white balance, and exposure correction; and up to 2 selection tags - label and rating. It does not mean we do not need those tool tips, or do not mean to implement them - it is just substantial work and needs some time.
XMP files have a forced mode of creation, which we use to propagate settings. For example, some cameras have unreliable orientation sensors (or no sensor at all). The workflow for such situation is described on p.p.33 and 34 of the manual, 'Processing files for the cameras that lack orientation sensors'.
Forced XMP creation is useful for a series of shots that need same exposure correction, white balance adjustment, orientation, and label/rating (that also includes panoramas). Of course, if one decides to apply additional adjustments to the file under the review, the XMP is re-written with new settings.