Precise alignment of text objects with other objects

The align to glyph bounds is a good function to have for certain alignment purposes. But in order to get the right kind of vertical placement I usually need to type out a dummy capital letter character, such as "E" or "I" and align that into the desired position, then I'll type over that with the desired lettering I want in that space. Descenders and ascenders in mixed case lettering that throw off the vertical alignment, as well as curved letters that dip below the baseline and extend above the cap line. 

One thing that could make this process faster and easier is an Align to Baseline function. I've already posted Align/Distribute by Baseline as a feature request in the appropriate forum. I just don't know if or when the Illustrator development team will incorporate that into the application. It's worth mentioning some other applications do allow users to align/distribute text objects to other objects according to their baselines. That would definitely be faster than turning on Smart Guides and manually dragging and snapping text objects into specific locations.