Digital BW, The Print

I am missing something and I'd like you please to comment. I am new to this group but 
have aleady benefited enormously from you expertise and generosity. Thanks!

So here is my question, really a comment inviting response. I have been making inkjet 
prints (Epson 9500, 9600, 3000, 1280, PhotoEX, 2200, 4000, and Canon i9900) of 
photography and art repro for about 5 years essentially for a living. I have never coated 
papers, but have always coated canvas with a number of products with reasonable results. 
In all this work I have always been bothered by a certain "surface" artifact that is a dead 
giveaway-it's an inkjet print and the ink is just sitting there, smug on the paper surface! I 
suspect you know what I mean. It is relatively easy to get a great looking print from inkjet 
technology, but it is not easy to make a print that has what many people call "depth", what 
you techys might identify as dmax or wide gammut.

Recently I have been experimenting with coating papers. I like the results a lot, and for me 
it potentially resolves some reservations I have with inkjet prints. I've been making 
profiles, and looking at the effects in a 3D viewer (Colorthink by Chromix).  Again I like the 
results.

My question is quite simply why isn't coating after printing considered more of a frontier? I 
know there are many problems, but to my way of thinking surface qualities that manifest 
themselves as flatness, variable glossyness, and frequently lack of deep tonal range are 
the major disadvantage of injet prints. I am aware of the information people have posted 
about experiments in coating, and clearly a lot of people do it. But it isn't the big issue I 
would think it could be. Thanks very much for you comments. I am posting this here 
because I like the way you people think and it obviously applies to B&W as well as color 
printing.