Nah.
Display-referred means black = 0% luminance, white = 100% and middle-grey = 18% but when using non-linear RGB, it gets encoded at 50%.
In that context, shadows are the 0 to 50% range, highlights are the 50 to 100% range. Guess what… the tone curve GUI is very much grounded into this assumption. Having middle grey in the middle of the graph makes for a great GUI.
Unfortunately, in scene-referred, black > 0 Cd/m², white = ? and middle-grey = ?. For all we know, white could have infinite luminance, and middle-grey is not so central anymore.
Goodbye pretty GUI. Goodbye shadows. Goodbye highlights. All we have are illumination values. What do they mean ? It’s up to you to decide. We have anonymous luminance values. That’s all.
So stop fighting it, embrace it or stick to display-referred, but trying to transfer display-referred thinking onto scene-referred workflow is doomed to fail.
Trust me, you are not the first one to try, and all the previous one have been broken. You are like a horse who refuses the saddle. You will end up accepting that saddle, you only don’t know it yet. But you will. Try fighting it, you will be the one getting tired. I’m sitting on my ass, I have all the time needed. I have broken many horses like you in the past 2 years. They always surrender.