Current glyph style of letter ख is confusing

[abhi-deshpande]

In the Devanagari (Marathi, Hindi, Sanskrit) fonts, letter ख is implemented as रव (i.e. the र part and the व part looks seperate). Although ख has been written conventionally like this, its now considered oldstyle and obsolete because it creates a sense of confusion between the real ख and रव while reading. The metrics of the glyph ख and combination of रव would be certainly different in the font, but this difference is pretty unnoticeable when reading body text. Conjuncts would also look pretty different. Therefore, it should be written by stretching the र part into the व part.

Today's standard writing style : (Noto Serif Devanagari)

Current oldstyle implementation in Tiro :

Though, I would suggest that the current glyph style can be kept in the font as a stylistic alternate.

[tiroj]

This is a topic that Fiona and I have considered several times, and each time we decided to stick with the traditional form as being better suited to the design of the Tiro Devanagari (with its pronounced diagonal strokes) and to its original purpose in the Murty Classical Library of India volumes. The curved, connecting shape is a different design language: it works well in some styles of type, but not everywhere, and the rakar form and half form with rakar in the Noto font seem really awkward.

Will think about this some more, but this is not likely to be a change in the near future.

[abhi-deshpande]

If it's a choice specific to a design characteristic (as you said in this case, the diagonal strokes), it would be wise to keep it as is. If implementing a glyph style causes it to look mismatched, and alien to overall design, it would be better to skip it.