My 1970's era Tornado pintop had rows of telltales, so it has been tried. ;-)

However, it is now generally agreed that they are not useful because they will pretty much all stall with the leading telltalle, with the exception of leech ribbons, which behave differently.

See Frank Bethwaite's "High Performance Sailing", or wait for Randy to publish his perspective. ;-)

P.S.: Has anybody read Whidden's book as a tie-breaker?