Phil-
I'd thought about putting a clutch button on the shift lever, but I don't know a good way to actuate the throtle from the stick. I've seen pictures of a formula car with motorcycle style controls on the steering wheel, but that works only as long as you keep the wheel movement to 1/4 turn or so.
With standard hand controls you have a lever that sticks out from the steering column, like the turn indicator, that you move forward-back to brake and up-down to accelerate; you steer with the other hand. To be safe, you really need to be able to keep one hand on the wheel at all times, which means for a manual you'll have to operate the throtle, brake, clutch, and shift with the other. Not out of the question, but certainly a non-trivial engineering exercise.
If there was a way to use an electric switch to bump shift up or down one gear at a time, that might work if you could sequence the clutch somehow.
I still have a year's worth of work left to do, so I can hold off on the transmission a bit longer, but I'm hopping there is a way...otherwise,I'm going to complete it as a standard, hire someone to drive me once Lime Rock really, _really_ fast, sell it and buy a V12 E Jag with all power, auto, and air /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif
John