IAB Statement on Identifiers and Unicode 7.0.0

[Shawn Steele]

> l and I _can_ be rendered differently in the same font.  

But that's not a MUST, they MAY be rendered identically.

> If there was any expectation at all that the characters we are talking about would normally be rendered with any detectable difference in the same font, I have not seen anyone advancing that claim.

I don't see any reason that they MUST be rendered identically in all fonts.  Again, I'm not terribly familiar with this script, however my understanding is that it is an old form.  I could easily imagine that, since the meanings of these do differ, that a font designer or typographer could make an artistic decision to render them slightly different, perhaps to emphasize the difference of the character.

-Shawn