Not as sexy as viewport text maybe, but you can display a floater window that shows you the dimensions of any selected object. Utilities > Measure > New Floater.
i would uvmap the highpoly, and render out an ao map without the floaters and then render out the aos for the floaters separately, and then bake the two like the normalmap to the lowpoly
When modeling the magazin try to make it straight out and then just bend it in the end. So you are able to create this complex geometry easily. For the problem with the floaters. The geometry around the floater needs to face in the same direction als the geometry of the object below. So if you have a floater on a curved…
no, do not scale your low to cover floaters, you want your low to match the base shape of your high, you use the cage/ray distance to "catch the floaters".