Quote - The reason outputs get their own line is because with the introduction of the Compound Node, a node can have more than just one output and the outputs can have names.

Okay, so there was a reason. Thanks for explaining.

Still a waste of place though, most old materials look now like a mess of dozens of wildly overlapping nodes...

I'm wondering if keeping the base node (one input, one output) the old way, and using the new system only for Compound (or other multi-plug) nodes wouldn't have been better (from an ergonomy point of view). Doubling the size of all the folded nodes is annoying, especially for people making complex materials. If the Compound node looks special that's not a problem (after all it's special), for how many of those will anyody use at the same time? 5? 10?