Absolute/gauge length tooling setup

I'm loving a lot of things about Linuxcnc, this isn't one of them. Is there a way to set it up so that it uses absolute value tool offsets rather than being derived from a reference tool and active work offset?

Case in point, i work on/have worked on fanuc, Mitsubishi, siemens, Heidenhain, haas and Mazak controls, all with fixed location tool setters. Those setters measure the gauge length of the tool, basically from spindle face to tool tip, in an absolute value. This value can also be found by using an offline tool presetter and in some cases, a height gauge with a proper tool fixture.

In Linux, it seems like if I pick up a tool offset with my fixed setter, find the top of my part (g54) then touch that tool off again, the tool offset shifts the value of the difference between the tool setter face height and the z value in my G54. This tool offset value would be much better suited to staying at the machine (g53 value) reference value, rather than changing with the work offset.

Still being fairly new to LinuxCNC, I'm wondering if I'm missing something here? I'm using verser probing v2, lcnc v2.8.0 (with which I'm finding some minor issues with the verser macros, but I'm finding workarounds for) and am not fully familiar with everything, so maybe it's me? I haven't found any in depth info for the verser probing stuff, so I've just been going based on instinct (I'm an AE for a global machine tool builder), but if these tool offsets are working the way they should for this software, who do I talk to to suggest a change to the actual lcnc code to have it be more to the industrial standard? I'm not a coding guy, just someone that can write some ridiculous stuff with macro b

I don't use an external tool setter so my probe is the reference tool with length 0 and all tool lenghts are in relation to that. So I set up the part z0 with the probe and that is all that is needed.
Now if you want to use your external tool jig as zero wouldn't you just enter the tool lenght of your probe in the tool table?

[edit]
If the tool length of your probe is not zero I guess you would need to activate Toollength compensation for setting your parts z0.

[edit2]
OK, just tried it:
Defined T1 length = 100 (Probe)
Defined T2 length = 90 (Tool is 10 mm shorter than the probe)

MDI:
T1 M6 G43 (Probe)
Move probe and touch off on work piece (G54 Z0)
T2 M6 G43 ( (Tool is 10 mm shorter than the probe)
The Z reading in the DRO changes to 10.000

Note: Don't use T0. Leave T0 entries at 0.

[edit3]
I just realized that this is actually a much better method than what I have been doing since my method references the tools to the tip of my probe. If I break my probe and have to replace it with one of different length I'll have to change all the tool lengths. With the method using the virtual zero of the tool setter and the probe being just one of the tools in the table all that is needed is to measure the new probe and change its tool length in the table.