How can you say that segmented patch cords are bad 95% of the time when they are not even available in Pd 100% of the time?
Just to take Miller's "Techniques" as an example, if there were segmented patch cords then all of his horizontal connections could be made unambiguous by having about 5px of vertical cord segment directly above the inlet.
Also, I've never seen you complain about any of the ASCII art on the this list, which often (surely more than 5% of the time) uses "-" and "|" at 90-degree angles and "+" to make segmented patch cords.
-Jonathan