Not that I’m a fan of the cookbooks (the opposite in fact) but I guess they can’t talk about literally everything - none of the Barry Thornton developers are special / different / innovative so that’s no loss. The other guy, his concoctions are nothing special and have no real objective data or science behind them so there’s no loss there either. Understand that throwing some things together that will develop film is almost trivial.
I don't think either fellow, Jay or Barry, just threw things together and some of there developers are pretty darn good. 510 pyro has some very devote fans and Barry was always trying to get every last gran to be razor sharp. Both of these folks put an awful lot of thought into each of their concoctions and it shows in the end results.
I think the actual bones of the truth lies somewhere in between. I've used Barry's divided developer, performing A/B comparisons with other developers and found it actually has some valid, worthwhile properties (definitely an improvement over Divided D-23). Is it "special" or "innovative"? No, not really, but neither is it the result of "just throwing things together" and lots of wishful thinking. Karl Matthias's "2B-1" divided developer is similar to other divided developers, but generates more contrast than — say — Barry Thornton's version, and so it offers something useful and is worth exploring.
On the other hand, I recognize that there are some developers that people have created that — in their own minds, at least — offer something unique and superior, but in fact do nothing special. I have not used 510 Pyro myself, but I know people who have done comparison tests with it and found it didn't do anything that PMK or Pyrocat HD didn't do at least as well. There are lots of recipes to be found that are variations on standard themes, and at best many of them offer no meaningful improvements over what preceded them, or are inferior in one way or another. There are dozens of variations on the "Xtol-type" ascorbate developer but I doubt that any of them offers any
meaningful differences in terms of
results. They may offer conveniences, or make home-brewing easier for the DIY folks like myself (I use FX-55 specifically because it makes concocting the developer easy and offers long term shelf life) but they are otherwise virtually interchangeable with Xtol.
My guess is that if Anchell and Troop don’t mention something in their writings, it’s probably because it doesn’t provide results that are significantly different from other formulas within the same family of developers. By including
“historical developers of no particular distinction,” they provide a meaningful context for what we know about the evolution of film developers. Besides, Anchell & Troop are free to pick and choose what they want to write about, and if they make choices that seem arbitrary or dismissive to some readers, that's ultimately their decision to make, whether or not it appears to leave out content that some feel important top include.
