The difference between a recorder and whistle is the fingerholes, not the bore or the fipple/labium. The Susato "renaissance recorders" are exactly the same mouldings and tubing as their whistles but with the fingerholes in different places. And most of the upmarket whistlemakers now make instruments with conical bore and curved windways which have been borrowed from recorder design - drill the fingerholes in different places and they would *be* recorders.

That is, Foolestroupe's "intensely designed" stuff doesn't make any sense. The elements of the design that make for chromatic fingering and those which make for different tonal characteristics are completely independent of each other.

Recorders are also not necessarily designed for "standard tempering". High-end Baroque ones are often configured to make mean-tone the default, but most recorders are flexible enough in pitch to fit in with a range of tuning systems - even the cheapest plastic school descant will let you play C# lower than Db or G# lower than Ab, as you get in meantone.