While you were asking about other simple functions: We do not have any string manipulation possibilities, maybe some standard string manipulation functions could be introduced? E.g. one thing we currently cannot do is remove a color code from a string. In other instances I might want to explode() a string or at least get the substr() until the occurance of a specific character in the string.
And to squeeze my constant request in: Non-ASCII support in UI scripting would be very very very helpful.