Look what I dug up from a font dataset with a proportional distribution across styles: it turns out most modern fonts use the same glyph for the breve and the kratka. Unicode also treats them as a single character.

So why is it standard practice in the industry to draw the kratka and the breve differently? Where did this tradition come from, and what purpose does it serve today? I tried to trace its origins but couldn't find anything. Maybe some type designers here know?