arnog
English mode: "eyes" has a non-flipped silme
The "e" hangs above the silme. Shouldn't it be flipped around to a silme nunquerna since there's a tehta above it now?
That is actually correct for the General Mode for English, Tolkien seems to have used the flipping rule for silme only in his Elvish modes (and used silme nuquerna for c pronounced like s in other English modes, which Tecendil and many others transfer to the General Mode for English, cf. center). One could argue that it could be this instead, but silme nuquerna is not needed here
Example:
Of Westmarch by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien. Herein is set forth the history of the War of the Ring and the Return of the King as seen by the hobbits.
OK, I see - thanks for the exlanation. In that case, should the font(s) in question be adjusted to write the tehta "below" the tail of the silme, as it can be seen in the above example? Asking because the tehra is "above" the tail rather than below it.
Both versions can happen (cf. history). The Dan Smith encoded fonts support it with * I K < for more open variants of silme, silme nuquerna, esse, esse nuquerna (I think that's Tecendil's intention behind the code {alt-silme}, but it actually just produces a normal silme.) Telcontar has a font feature for it, that doesn't change anything for me though (LibreOffice 7), Alcarin doesn't seem to have this option
Annatar & Eldamar
I'd say at least for Dan Smith fonts, the open variants should be preferred, for the Unicode fonts both options render correctly so it comes down to personal preference.