Welcome schermerberger ... it's good to have a newcomer here. It's like nerve gas hit this place about three weeks ago ... all activity ceased. Maybe, with at least you, allthumbs and me, we can get some discussion going here again.
Glad to hear
PlaneTalk rings a bell with your thinking! I"ve said this many times and I'll mention it again: it was filing away
slide 'line-em-up' positions in standard tuning that tuned my brain the PlaneTalk mindset. For some reason, slide makes you look at how music works and how it fits into the matrix of the fretboard in a different way, and also reinforces how melody-harmony-chords are all the same thing.
Regarding Standard tuning: it struck me recently, while working on the DVD I'm putting together on that subject, that standard is a blend of many open tunings ... it's just that they're not six-string chords. But who cares? It's open major, minor, major seventh, minor 7th, 11, 9th, sus4 ... there's a string set to accommodate all of those flavors. There are double stops all over the place for more flavors ... all of them in fact. You may not get all those cliche inversions and licks that open tunings spit out automatically, but there are enough players out there doing that and doing it well. I think standard has the edge, myself. Drop that bottom E down to D, and you've got the best of all: dropped D.
But, I certainly understand those who do pursue the traditional sound of open tunings. From time to time I tune to open and have a good old time, but I lack confidence in my fretboard map when I deviate from standard/dropped D.