TomD
I have a plane like that also. Krenov had a plane like that. A jointer has a number of characteristics. One of which is that it has a length to bite ratio that allows it to minimally spring joints for a given amount of material removed. When jointing, you want the work to progress at a decent pace because it isn't finish work, and doesn't need to be babied most of the time. And second you want a predictable and probably light amount of spring, so you can either use that in the joint, or have a knowable reference point when proceeding to flat, etc...

This all means that if you want your jointer to be short, it needs to take a proportionally finer shaving to be in the same ballpark, and if the work is for some reason finer, then the bite needs to be finer still. Krenov's jointer was something like 18 inches. At one point I made a plane like that for Krenov type work, and also for guitar work. What both these approaches have in common is low aspect ratio bookmatched joints. How that works out is that the joints are essentially impossible to spring at all, and both are examples of small scale work where fine shavings are not too hard on the pace of work. So basically what you end up with is a smoother that is 18 inches long.

Another thing I did with Krenov planes was to place the mouth dead center. I guess this was a reaction to the east vs west thing. Both work, so why not put the mouth in the middle. I did that on quite a few planes, you end up with longer short planes. Not sure this was an improvement, but it didn't seem to be a disadvantage either.