I'll update the thread, as I have a workaround and am talking with the experts at Tek via email.
The command set does include a function 'SOUR[1|2]:PULS:TRANS:LEAD {n}' to change the leading edge rise time and a corresponding 'SOUR[1|2]:PULS:TRANS:TRAIL {n}' command. The idea is that instead of letting the AFG pick some slope based on your waveform, you can just set it to be whatever time you want with the minimum being 8 nS. That sort of works and sort of doesn't.
In our application we have one waveform that for example, has 4000 points that represent 20 mS in time. The rise time on these edges was about 7 uS - *way* too long. The solution was to add a driver layer that saw we were about to write 4000 points, then decide we could duplicate each point 32 times and still fit into the 128K RAM. It builds a new waveform with each point replicated as many times as it can and still fit, then ups the sample rate accordingly. Using that trick I got the rise time down to 160 nS.
I have to believe that others have run into the same issue, so it seemed reasonable to share our solution so far.