The whole "just add a setting" thing is what we're trying to resolve.

Sorry, I'm trying hard to avoid using those terms while attempting to provide an idea for a solution. I know it's not easy and I never tried to imply it was. Where I'm from, complaining about something without having an idea on how to fix it is looked down upon.

Are you saying the intent is to avoid additional settings in the UI?

We're in the business of software development: we're used to, nay, relying on people complaining without them having a clue what's actually going on or how to fix it

Seriously though, please keep throwing any and all issues at us. It's how we improve.
You being incredibly constructive is a nice bonus.
That's exactly what I'm saying. A huge problem of the old GUI is that it was so cluttered.

The long-term idea for the meter bar is to be able to fold and unfold it, maybe even to select which meters you want it to show on a per-page basis...
But we need context menus for that.
The last thing we want is to have to add another settings menu on some page with a bucket of checkboxes, overwhelming people.

What about making the meter pane resizable (and having it automatically remember the size), perhaps on a per-page basis?

I could do that, yes, but it would only be remembered during that specific session. Would that be acceptable?

Anything we want to save will end up in the parameter list (permanently) and I'm trying to avoid that during development, since those settings might end up not being necessary in the final product.