I share your burdens WRT age and gearing. It's frustrating to work in an industry that says how I ride isn't popular enough to support (other then with E road bikes of course
).
Some of the triple ring issue is the number of rear cogs, as in what spacing the rings are speced for and what then is the rest of the system (ft der and shifter). If you run Shimano STI levers then that the ft shifter is a true indexed (albeit sometimes with trim points) design makes the matching it and the ring's spacing kind of important. So a crank speced to 8/9 speed spacing won't be really matched to a 10/11 speed frt der and shifter. It's almost circular reasoning but the interplay between ft and rear sprocket counts and what the ft or rear ders and levers are is the devil of details.
If you run Campy Ergo levers with the ft being the G spring design then the matching of shifter to ft der to ring spacing is FAR less the issue. This is what I do on all my regularly used bikes. I have mostly Shimano early 1990s road triples (FC-620X6 as example) although do install Sugino or SRs on friends and family bikes too. My ft ders are either Shimano or SunTour from about the same period. I use a 9 speed rear end. I also run a Shift mate on many of my bikes to translate between the Campy and Shimano bits of the rear system. Andy