Personally, I think you're a bit paranoid and probably overestimate your own contribution in all this. There's been a lot of stuff kicking around, most of which doesn't make it into books, magazine articles or products.
Uh huh. . .don't have a response regarding Bruce probably being involved with teaching multi-pass sharpening to your Imacon guy, huh?
No, I don't think I overestimate Bruce's contribution to the industry-if anything, due to Bruce's modesty, I think it's vastly understated by many people, including you.
Since you aren't from the US (Australia, right?) I suspect you've never been to a Macworld, a Photoshop Conference or a Photoshop World and seen Bruce speak? You've never seen the crowds hanging on every word and following him wherever he went. You've never experienced his dry whit and unique ability to take a boring, complicated subject and make it fun and easy to understand?
Bruce did go on the road to Australia for GretagMcBeth. . .did you ever get the chance to see him speak? If not, it's your loss...
During Bruce's trip to Australia, he fell in love with Australian wine and bought more than a few cases but had a dickens of a time getting it back to the States...I'm not sure he EVER got all of it.
Now that the more useful techniques and "magic numbers" are in the public domain, thanks to Bruce's openness in his book on Sharpening, it's all fairly moot anyway.
Well, no, not really...Bruce has been totally open about the "process" but he kept the "magic numbers" pretty close to his vest...do you know the DPI that human vision can resolve for an 8 x 10 print? Bruce did. . .he calculated that for an 8 x 10 print held about 12 inches from your eyes, your vision-assuming normal 20/20 vision-resolved about 355DPI (and this isn't secret, since he wrote about this publicly). 20/20 vision resolves about one minute of one degree arc...one can translate that to actual DPI...But...
Exactly what sharpening numbers do you need to plug into a sharpening routine to provide optimal image sharpness for an 8 x 10 matte print? Or an 8 x 10 glossy print? Don't know? See...it's the numbers to plug into the routine that are important. And, it's those numbers that "Mitch" doesn't grok...he still thinks that "presets" can't be determined and suggests rolling your own.
I'm not saying that other products can't do an excellent job of image sharpening...heck, even Photoshop CS2's Smart Sharpen is a pretty fancy tool and good old USM (written by John Knoll in 1989) can do a swell job. But, since you can't trust the display to tell you how much to sharpen, how are you going to use the display to determine the numbers to plug in?
Since you ain't from around here, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt...but don't doubt Bruce's contribution to this industry both publicly as well as behind the scenes working with Adobe, Apple, Kodak & MSFT as well as the color management companies such as the old GretagMcBeth and X-rite. You do yourself an injustice if you fail to comprehend what Bruce has done and what this industry has lost...