Having to fiddle 6 knobs to make 1 measurement, and then doing it all over again 2 minute later after a change is not productive. That is my view on it anyway - I'm fine turning all the knobs a hundred times on an oscilloscope to find, lock and explain the details I am looking for (I disgust auto set), but not when I'm measuring 1 quantity repeatably in a very limited changing environment while still needing to make adjustments back and forth for the scope to work. This level of interface is maybe acceptable for some, but not for me.
The reality of manufacturing/marketing is that you're an edge case. This problem could be solved in entry level DSOs but at the risk of going out of business because the resulting instruments would be unsalable to most people (they'd cost a lot more).
If you need this function a lot and all the fiddling is costing you money then you either need a more specialized oscilloscope or some sort of front-end adapter to clamp the signals before they even reach the oscilloscope (a fun project?)
I can relate to that. As pointed out, what I'm trying to do is quite niche and can be argued over if this capability should be supported or not (I certainly wish it was). However it likely won't because if you were to support every little niche feature customers require you will end up adding menu buttons, options and knobs at every corner of the menu/screen. It quickly becomes a mess. Hardware specifications get out of hand, product becomes too hard/expensive to engineer or produce, etc.
The place where I used to work every menu button change at 1st or 2nd level was heavily discussed and criticized by service & product engineers, which I think is a good thing. This resulted in some frustration of other colleagues which already promised some features and changes to customers, that did not happen.
I think nctnico also suggests a similar thing, like a fast-signal clamp board that you can safely overdrive but will recover in e.g. <1us or faster so influence on measurements is minimal. That sounds like a nice project idea, maybe something I could work on to solve this once and for all