Maya :: Linear Working Units Preference

I'm wondering if any effort will ever be made to fix the issues surrounding the "Linear Working Units" preference in Maya.

There are many persistent bugs surrounding the use of this feature. Locators change size, NURBS tools go haywire, etc.

Just today I discovered another very bizarre problem. With Linear Working Units set to centimeters (the default), then ordinary, normalized NURBS curves have a U parameter space from zero to one. It's axiomatic that the U parameter is the distance along the curve, measured not in linear units, but expressed as a decimal of the total length. I.E. halfway along the path, the U Value is 0.5, regardless of the actual length of the curve.

So that all makes perfect sense. But if we change the Linear Working Units to anything other than centimeters, everything goes to hell. With Linear Working Units set to Feet, then a normalized NURBS curve has a U parameter space from zero to 0.033. This can be clearly seen if attaching a Motion Path to a NURBS curve. The keyframe at the end of the curve shows a U Value of 0.033.

Obviously, a centimeter is 0.033 of a foot. But what does that have to do with NURBS parameter space? Absolutely nothing. Changing the working units should have no effect on the readout of the U Value.

I'm hoping the developers 1) know about this, 2) care, and 3) have the freedom to do something about it. Because this is, to put it bluntly, crazy-making. I know that the Linear Working Units feature was bolted on to an existing unitless system, so there are bound to be problems. But why on earth are NURBS parametric values affected by the choice of working units?