I start my tomatoes in the greenhouse then move them outside and I do not prune them. I actually crowd them and make sure I feed them well. My three roma plants provided us with the base for fresh bruschetta most of the summer and well into the fall.
I do not preserve them so don't have any input for those looking to can/freeze.

I also have experimented with different spacing for tomatoes over the many years I've grown them in the greenhouse. I find that if I have the plants 3-4 ft. apart, I get massive growth with lots more tomatoes per plant than if I use closer spacing. They still form a solid wall of growth down the row. In this kind of planting, I do absolutely no pruning; the plant grows to a support about 10' above the ground, and down again as it grows. I use sisal twine with clips to support the plants. It is a bit of a pain to harvest the top tomatoes, but it can be done. I experimented as well with the closer spacing of plants, with strict controls on their growth. While I got less yield per plant, I got quite a bit more yield per square foot of growing area; the yield per square foot is what is driving commercial greenhouses in their spacing. I also found that I had very few defective tomatoes when planting with the close spacing and strict controls. In contrast, I do get some tomatoes with odd shapes or different sizes when growing the big sprawl. I am curious about what you perceived as the drawbacks of the big sprawl growth of tomatoes. For me, the biggest drawback was probably the increased difficulty finding all the tomatoes, and harvesting them. It was also a challenge to remove a single plant in a row if it had issues. Just for perspective, my new seedlings in the greenhouse are spaced about 2-3 feet apart, and I plan to let them mostly sprawl; maybe I'll prune a little.
Renais

Renais, thanks, your explanation makes sense.

I suppose if one was trying to maximize yield of perfect tomatoes the commercial method would indeed make sense. Although it does seem wasteful to not make much use of all that vertical space.

I don't care if some (even the majority) of my crop is "imperfect" since it is mostly hand processed not eaten fresh. The sprawl method does seem to make better use of all the vertical space in the GH. But it does make harvesting harder, especially with my new 12' ceiling. And if you ever have a disease or bug problem, it can make spraying all surfaces quite hard to do.