Hi Wolf, To answer the question:
"Doesn't the nearly infinite disparity between various speaker's responses in rooms, including tweeter off and on axis dispersion and woofer loading sort of obviate set-up formulae?"
I don't thinks so. At least as far as how your speaker loads or couples to your room. The idea is to be far enough from walls to avoid reflection and be close enough for proper bass reinforcement. Then to be in the right seating position to get the most from your soundstage.
I don't think that Whether you are 83%, 95% or triangle is any more important than understanding standing wave, reflections and reinforcement, this is where some type of formula could come into play. On or off axis listening is a factor of what your final frequency curve is in the room. As, I'm sure that you know, as you take your speakers off axis, you change the top end response heading down to your mid range. If your room caused some sort of peak, much of this could be alieviated when you go off axis, or if you have a very flat response, most of us would like to listen on axis.
Either way, the boundries, could be summed up mathmatically.