I wasn’t involved in the coding to fix it. Yes that was the issue in the Kodi bug tracker
All I know is that when I’ve tried the current nightlies the aspect ratio that is displayed by skins is what is specidified in my nfo files. It no longer disappears after playing the file. I have all my 2.4 and 2.35 AR ratio files with 2.4 or 2.35 as the aspext ratio in the nfo even if they are actually 1.78 with hard encoded black bars ( ie direct Blu-ray Rips). Again this is because I want the AR to display the intended viewing AR. In the nightlies these stay as what is in the nfo and are not overwritten back to 1.78 ( the ar of the file itself) as has happened in the past
As to the subtitle question I don’t know because it wasn’t an issue that was affecting my usage