Tracking clicks to external links in the catalogue only works from result pages with XSLT enabled. The detail pages work with both XSLT and non-XSLT displays, it should probably be consistent across all result displays as well.
We officially deprecated the non-XSLT views - so I feel this is a WONTFIX now. Feel free to reopen if you want to provide a patch for older versions.
Yep, seems like an ok outcome to me. :)