Andrew R Stewart 

I never thought the length of the ft der cage had anything to do with lever effort. The der's links (the parallelagram), the cable attachment arm's length and the return spring's tension control the shift lever effort far more then whether the cage can handle a 24T ring VS a 39T ring (as the smallest). But different ders do have differing movement effort levels. The trend has been to have less cable attachment arm length and higher return spring tension in modern ft ders. These make for a stiffer/less sloppy parallelgram and quicker down shifting. Both increase the lever effort though. The Shimano shifter designs use pawls that are spring loaded to hold the cable spool from rotating and then a device to push the pawl up and out of the notch to release the spool. This design is very good at resisting the tension the cable exerts. The Campy guts have the index wheel (the cable spool) held by two springs pressing into spline like notches. their shape make rotating the index wheel in one direction easier then the other. But there is no pawl in notch so if the cable tension is high enough the springs will clib up and out of the notches, this is what happens when you hit the thump release button. So Ergo is more likely to have the chance of the cable spool/index wheel slipping/skipping when used with a very high tension ft der. This is the only draw back to Ergo, IMO. Andy.