Sort of solved ... we now have a "rich-text" form builder datatype that provides the various options in a sane way that's easy for packages to use. This was a result of discussions between Lars and I a couple of months ago, after which Lars implemented the new datatype.
Now all that's needed is to rewrite all the packages to use the form builder, and in addition the new datatype ... don't hold you're breath in anticipation but at least there's a clear path to our having the kind of consistency you envision. And that consistency was a primary motivation for adding a genuine form builder datatype for text fields that may optionally be html etc.
