Thanks for these further thoughts on paper tickets versus e-tickets.
In an ironic followup, after making my original posting the AA RTW agent phoned me back to say that the computer would not accept my new itinerary as an e-ticket so she would have to now issue it as a paper ticket, even though I had flown a segment since it was re-issued as an e-ticket in Feb. I hypothesized that maybe I had added some open jaw segments that put the total over 16 lines (or whatever the technical term is) but the agent rejected that explanation and stated that she sensed the reason why but couldn’t explain it to me!!!