It's always amazed me that for as sophisticated and accurate as shifting the rear derailleur has become, shifting the front derailleur remains a bit of a kludge. Witness the "trim click". (My 9s Ultegra front brifter had the same thing, so I don't think it is a function of how high up the product line the RSX group was.)

SunTour had a clever auto-trimming front shifter back in the 70s. Of course it required the front and rear shifters to be part of an integrated whole, so the downtube was the logical place for them.

It's not clear to me that indexed shifting up front was really that much of an advance (in back, yes).