Approaching triplets and slurs in John Williams' scores

[Dave Dexter]

Let's get into some engraving/notation nerdery, shall we? For context, as some of you know, I'm self-taught and have had to piece together my knowledge of engraving by querying more experienced musos and studying scores. Hence this may be plainly obvious - but it wasn't to me, so if anyone else finds this useful that's why I posted it.

I've been trying to arrive at a rigorous template for slur and triplet placement because it's always annoyed me - things get cluttered very quickly in such phrases, even if it's dictated by conventional engraving practice. At such points I defer to authority, usually from my John Williams scores - partially because I love his music and it's similar enough in approach to mine to usefully study, and partially because they're failsafe examples of works performed live regularly. There were surprisingly few examples that demonstrated how his orchestrator(s) approached such moments, but - from "Adventures on Earth":

Slurs go above triplets, unless there isn't space, in which case they go partially or wholly underneath. 
Here there's not enough space for slurs to go above the brackets without colliding with the crescendi, so they go entirely underneath. But the top stave, where there IS space, still has the slur underneath the brackets. Presumably because it would just look untidy otherwise. The differing shapes of each slurred phrase mean one single solution doesn't fit them all.

Engraving/notation is in many ways more important to me than the music it denotes, because it's what allows it to become real (and because poor engraving can get the door shut in your face by conductors and MDs) so I obsess over these details perhaps more than I should. As a case in point:
This is an oboe solo from a composer-conductor who professionally conducts John Williams and obviously knows his scores and engraving style; he's done what I prefer doing, which is divorcing slurs from triplets for a tidier stave. But I assumed my way wasn't right before seeing this, not having the weight of education behind my decisions to be confident in them. So the lesson is, perhaps, just do what you like as long as it's readable and relax a bit? I don't know.

[David Lilly]

Dave-
If you're on Facebook, I highly recommend you join the group "Music Engraving Tips." It's going 59,000 members strong and people enjoy arguing over obsessive details such as this on a daily basis, many of them professional engravers. It's helped me tremendously. 

In your case, it seems a personal preference on which looks tidier, and there may be no standard.

[HS Teoh]

Do you have Elaine Gould's Behind Bars?  It's kinda the de facto standard when it comes to all things notation, and often contains a lot of fine details that you may have missed.  It doesn't answer everything, though. There are still cases where it still comes down to the judgment call of the engraver.

In the case of tuplets with slurs, as in your case here, Gould writes:

When a bracket is longer than a slur, it goes outside the slur .... When a bracket is shorter than a slur, it goes inside it. ... Place the bracket outside the slur if the two would otherwise intersect.

Before this section, Gould also gives various advice when to put tuplet brackets above/below the staff, which may or may not be helpful in this case.

In any case, my point is that it's a good reference to invest in, if you haven't already. ;-)