My point of view is that there is a much broader ongoing conflict between:
- score as schematic representation of rhythm (traditional), vs.
- score as strictly proportional timeline (since 20th century – not earlier!)
And what Dorico and other software have settled on is a hybrid of the two, with rhythmic values spaced on a graduated (ideally logarithmic) scale, and completely ignoring the centering issue. Mixed in here is a huge tradition of 20th-century hand-copying that lays out the bars on the page first and then fills them in, which leans toward linear spacing. This is how Finale originally worked by default, and still does if you turn off the automatic note-wise spacing.
Given that barlines must have a little extra space, that disturbs a precise timeline already. The concept of spacing I see in old manuscripts, which was faithfully copied in traditional engravings, is completely different: The symbols in a bar are always more or less centered between the barlines, whether it’s 8 eighths, 2 halves, mixed note values, or whatever. To me this consistently reads more clearly than linear spacing. I am bothered as much by half and quarter notes hugging the left barline and leaving unnecessary gaps on the right as I am by whole notes doing so. Once a bar is filled with eighths, this concern tends to disappear.
Also this is much more often an issue with single-staff music. In scores obviously long notes often have to accommodate the space of shorter notes. But in handwritten and plate-engraved orchestral parts you never see large extra spaces for long notes. They generally wanted to fit as many bars on a page as possible to reduce printing costs and page turns.
If anyone is interested in another long discussion about spacing (containing several points I don’t want to restate here), there’s a good one from last year.