One aspect of touring (and tandems) with really low gearing is that the wheel can "wind up" and the rim can be pulled to one side by the pulling spokes with each pedal stroke. If the rear der cage is already close to contacting the spokes when in the low gear this rim movement can cause the spokes to snag on the der cage. The way to avoid this is to have the pulling spokes laced so their heads are outboard of the flange and thus have slightly less lateral leverage on the rim.

I have to agree with Francis in that so many spoke lacings are tried for looks and don't relate to actual structural improvements. There's a reason why those companies who value their liability and reputation don't use the "artful" lacing patterns, Darwin prevails after a while.

All that being said Shimano did try this idea in the early/mid 1980s) by scalloping the flanges on evert other spoke hole (Direction 6 was their name for it, IIRC). This allowed all the heads to be on the same side of the flange but still offer crossing patterns without serious spoke bending around each other. I venture that they found out the "improvements" weren't enough to offset the added cost to make the hubs. Andy