lost into a chasm between the rules:

you will see that Lab Texts and Lab Totals and Lab Rules have been made uniform and systematic, and a single system - so the "thing you learn a spell from" is now a Lab Text.
Unfortunately, it's then clear that you can't case a spell from someone's lab-notes...

5e is jammed packed, but managed to smooth over a great many cracks - it could be said that adding a set of rules for making a casting text would have inflated the 5e core beyond its duty...

Perhaps our Great Leader will use some supplement to expand on this and restore spell texts?

(In the mean time, note that a charged device can take the form of one-scroll per charge, producing a one-shot spell text, if that's any help?)

I've been looking for it as well - especially since my group's been discussing it a bit (we opted for a cross between 4th and 4th edition). I don't now about the designers reasons to omit it, but my own thoughts were that the possibility to cast from text is somewhat inconsistent with the idea that a magus is basically reinventing a spell even when learning it from anothers research. That's a nice touch, to my opinion,that the hermetic theory of magic is more of a common ground, that allows for magi to share knowledge, but actually not a conclusive wiew of the Realm of Magic (even being hinted that it actually might somewhat hinder a magus to reach his full potential) and that the magi actually have a quite individual sense of magic. In that light the casting from text seems out of sync with the world that the characters live in (as opossed to the rules).

By the way problem was that up till now casting from text has been a prominet feature of our chronicle (my players starting as apprentices and playing them for a long while - sometimes sneaking into the covenant library to copy what's not meant for apprentices), which makes it the harder to change - even if it feels apropriate.

Transsanus

>(In the mean time, note that a charged device can take the form of >one-scroll per charge, producing a one-shot spell text, if that's >any help?)

That does help with the story that I'm brewing, probably I'll add a good f&e bonus for single charge potions that use paper or something....

What about the yearly casting of an Aegis. Under the old rules in previous sagas, young magi would risk life and limb casting a low-mid level aegis from text (double botch dice is nothing to snear at, we would always make a story out of it). With the change young magi can no longer depend on thier initial libray for an aegis - there needs to be a rego or vim specialist to cast the ritual - or perhaps some generous benifactor will cast the ritual for them at a price....

>By the way problem was that up till now casting from text has been a >prominet feature of our chronicle (my players starting as >apprentices and playing them for a long while - sometimes sneaking >into the covenant library to copy what's not meant for apprentices), >which makes it the harder to change - even if it feels apropriate.

In previous sagas under the old rules the covenant library had a life of it's own (metaphorically speaking) in terms of supporting the covenant. If the covenant needed something done quickly(in a story) and magically and none of the character knew the spell a useful spell might be in the library for the magi to cast from, we also have played in vis poor settings, so boosting spont spells was the least used option.

Well it certainly was vis-poor for the poor apprentices, but also the fact that we've played 15 in-game years as apprentices (which I can only strongly recommend, it's been great!!!) has been a factor, since they knew few formulars and had low Arts score for the better part. Thus casting from text became important plot-elements for apprentices that might be very dependent on said texts, yet still had to put themselves in jepoardy for minor magical effects.

Anyway, my fix for now (seeing good reason to drop the casting from text, but not really wanting to dump it, since that would make a paradox with many of our former stories) is to seriously lenghten the time needed to cast from text.