Y'all have such fancy rotary thingumajigs, with gear numbers yet!
I have the old-fashioned first series Rohloff rotary control, with black on black invisible numbers and a triangular control knob, well shaped and ridged for gripping with the smooth leather dress gloves I normally wear (I cycle in my normal wear, khakis or cords according to season). I think that when mine needs replacement, I'll get another one of the triangular ones rather than the new round ones. Not being able to see in which gear I am is not much of a hardship. I find gear 11 by going up to 14, whoosh, and switching three back, clickclickclick, and 8 by switching another three down from there, which is convenient enough, if not very racy in they eyes of the peloton.
I used to have white spots of Tippex on the control at gears 11 and 8 but didn't bother to replace them when they wore off. I'd come to the conclusion that all the gears in the Rohloff box are efficient enough, so that an effort to be in the "most efficient gear" (11) is obsessive, especially once your box has quitened down after the first 5000 miles.
On a Rohloff box, unlike a derailleur, it doesn't really matter which gear you are in because if you need another gear, you just twirl the knob until you reach the gear you want.
I wonder if the rubber parts, triangular and round, are interchangeable between the earlier and later setups. Though I'm not sure I would recommend the triangular grip to a long-distance tourer, because it is clearly less ergonomic to ride all day with your hand on a triangular grip than on a round one. But for a utility or daytrip bike, the triangular grip is definitely preferable.
