I don't know if it is splitting hairs or not...and I don't know the level of stress relative to reed shape or other modification - like making the harp more airtight - as I haven't measured them myself.
Being that I personally don't blow many reeds, and I work towards making that harder for others to do on my customs, I guess my focus is more on response with the reed. Technically, unless it is a sympathetic reed, the reed has to have some level of arc to even sound. If you look at a reed offset on a really high end custom, you'll see that there is a balance of where the gap actually starts vs how the reed closes.
If you take a toothpick, for example, and push the reed into the slot near the tip, middle, and rivet, a very responsive reed will tend to close (enter the gap) at essentially the same time. If you look at the profile from the side, you'd also see that the gap starts well before the reed tip, but generally isn't large enough for a wealth of light to pass through.
This is all very hard to express via text and even harder with the crappy video gear I have at home, lol. Going back to the OP, if you are making sure the top of the reeds aren't entering the slot when at rest, ensuring your gaps aren't too wide or tight, and your reeds are relatively flat, you shouldn't have too many issues.
A final comment to this post...When I gap a reed, I generally have my forefinger and thumb supporting the back 1/2 to 2/3 of the reed by applying gentile pressure to keep the the back half of the reed from changing its gap. I am doing a horrible job articulating this, but once you have the position of the reed set near the rivet pad, you want that to stay stable and adjust the reed shape and offset from the front half of the reed.
I*think* we are explaining a similar thing. That's where writing this stuff down is difficult. I don't think there is a universal understanding of some of the tier two vocabulary we use. We talk about reed curves and arcs, but don't have a constant reference of what is an arc, how much that arc should or shouldn't be, etc.
So I suppose the Idiot's Guide to Gapping least we need to know is you want the reed entering the slot fairly simultaneously at all points, which would require a relatively flat reed whose off set (gap) begins gradually from the reed pad and not abruptly from the reed tip.
The issue with an abrupt curve, IME, is you lose response...I don't think anyone is suggesting you do that, and AFAIK, any online or video resources I've seen haven't show people in the know doing that, but I can see where some explanations may confuse that.