Yes everyone will make fun of you for fully battened mains, but they don't flog the main and boom, which means for those simple short runs where you have to go dead up wind, the sail is nicely under control. And they keep a nice shape in older sails. We've used them 25 years on #505.
Slides need a stainless plate which is tapped and screwed into the gate ... I found that even though they force you to buy a set [for each side of the gate], using only one seems to work better depending on the slide being used. And you may have to use a grinder to slightly reshape the top and bottom edge to make it real easy to slide pass the plate. Eventually we went to tides marine track and slides which is really good if you go out a lot.
