No, that "some" would be clear. If recipe implemented a way to download past issues, all issues would be downloaded (parsing this is not that difficult:
https://www.economist.com/weeklyedition/archive ). If a recipe did not implement it, no issues would be downloaded.
I think a wording could be found that would not be misleading (somethin like NOTE: You may miss some issue this way.). Also, the requirement to keep callibre running would be much more bearable if it could keep running without its window as a daemon, though I understand that is a bug change.
P.S.: I think at least the issue 1) from the original post could be addressed.