I am not sure what the prevailing though may be, but IMO stand development, which can enhance adjacency effects, is more important with LF and ULF work than with small format. The reason is that adjacency effects from small format will be enlarged many times in printing, which makes them much larger and enhances the effect of apparent sharpness. In LF and ULF the edge effects do not get enlarged, so enhancing them more with reduced agitation methods can result in even greater apparent sharpness. Of course, the key is to retain smooth tonalities as you increase apparent sharpness. This is where choice of developer and type of agitation plays such an important role.
As for ways of controlling contrast, there are indeed many other ways. However, reduced agitation with dilute solutions is the most effective way to control contrast and obtain at the same time maximum possible EFS, IMO. I believe that is what Steve Sherman's work shows.
Sandy King
I have used Pyrocat-MC 1:1:100 with several ISO 400 films in conjunction with semi-stand development and have experienced these enhanced adjacency effects. Micro gradation is certainly not smooth in the immediate vicinity of the effect, but the accutance is very high.
Much of my photography concerns carved stone figures and I often attempt to utilize side-lighting to create an impression of depth. When this lighting is allied with the adjacency effects, the impression of depth can be striking. Almost startling.
Naturally, it is not a tool that I would look to exploit for all applications - especially given the inherent limitations of enlarging a 35mm negative. But it has certainly created some interesting possibilities for me.
I have applied this development technique to HP5+, 400TX, APX 400, and TMY. My impression - which is based on inspection of the resulting negatives taken of a control subject on a light table with a good 8x loupe - is that TMY and HP5+ seemed to exhibit clearest evidence of adjacency effects in the major subject outlines. TMY had the overall edge but it was close.
My negatives are used for silver gelatin prints and scanning and I cannot claim to be a strong proponent of TMY. I have come across numerous references on the web that suggested T-grain films are inflexible where development techniques are concerned and that the benefits of stand and semi-stand development are wasted on them. Yet, I believe I have seen clear evidence of these effects in my TMY negatives. The color cast of the negatives suggested that they developed considerable stain, but I have not bleached out the silver to verify the presence of true image stain.