Originally Posted by
Leisesturm
???KISS??? FWIW the capacities of both FD and RD are fudgeable. On paper, our 105 FD and RD should NOT shift a 53/39/24 and 12 - 27 9sp but it does. We were doing this in 2004, long before megarange cassettes existed for road hubs. In 2017 with the o.p.'s kind of riding in mind we would use the same triple up front, paired with an 11-32/36 10sp and call it very good. I have DT shifters on the Raleigh Coupe, Dura Ace indexed rear. Finding brifters that will shift a triple is probably not all that easy but they exist, I know Microshift/Nashbar makes them, but the o.p. is clearly a 'road less traveled' kind of guy so why not bar ends? <shrug>
The "why not" is that one can't shift them out of the saddle. OTOH one can't shift the front out of the saddle anyway, so bar end in front makes good sense. My fall-back would be a pair of brifters, with the left not connected, using a bar-end on that side for shifting the front.