I was wondering about the extent to which engraving 'technologies' -- quill pen, italic nib, woodcut, moveable type, plate, stencil transfer and ultimately computers -- have determined aspects of notation itself? In other words, what symbols and practices are the way they are because of limitations or behaviours of the process used?
Text fonts for dynamics often provoke ire on these pages, though again the established symbols are just stylized versions of a particular typeface. However, Novello and Baerenreiter both have used/use text fonts for dynamics.
Once we accept that dynamics 'are just text': -- things like clefs have their origin in letterforms, but they have become abstracted into entirely new symbols, through a process of evolution and ornament. If we know they are just stylized letters, what is functionally wrong with just using a large letter G in Myriad Bold?

Conversely, will we ever see a further evolution of those symbols into even more abstracted forms, or are they now 'fixed'?
Moveable type in the 16th century provided greater speed and reproduction than a pen, but at a cost to flexibility and elegance.
Similarly, while we expect computers to provide fewer limitations than conventional methods, it's clear that all software struggles to contain and express the 'gamut' of musical language, with all its vagaries and exceptions. To what degree should we allow the newest process to inform and proscribe the notation that we use? In what ways will notation change in the future?
Clearly, I need to get out more.... (or at all!)