yes good point that is useful if you are content to reverse the path after you have drawn the stroke, but that is not the freehand way
xara gives you a realtime visual of your stroke as you draw it, so why then negate that in respect of path direction...

about time xara had a define your own stroke shapes feature too

and if you are content to modify the stroke afterwards then being able to change width on the fly by dragging mouse left/right over selected node(s) is now well established elsewhere