I am thinking some of the unexpected behavior in 1.4.0.RC5 may be due to Snow Leopard. For instance, in Item>Transform, Rotate and Skew just resize the text frame.
Has this been the experience with other people using SL? In one doc, guides were visible when being dragged out, but disappeared on release. They were visible in guides manager. Show Guides was checked but grayed out in the View menu. Creating a new doc restored Show Guides, but Rotate and Skew still do not work.