No need to use via proxy at all. Minosoft supports 1.12.2 natively. You can just enforce that version (cuberite also supports 1.14, you can force that version too).
But both your points are valid, doors are implemented like shit in < 1.13, but I added support https://gitlab.bixilon.de/bixilon/minosoft/-/commit/9afbe0df... (Oct 14, 2023). I will test that...when I got time :)
No clue about mobs, but textures were named differently back then. Could be.