Bob -- Is the sentence I quoted above new with the 2016 revision? It seems a bit unclear.
Also note, from 1.3 Player's Use of Equipment -- "The equipment must be used only for the purpose or in the manner that the equipment was intended."
The sentence about the configuration of the bridges being up to the player has been there since January, 2008.
Another example of an unusual use of the bridge is one I've seen a couple of times by snooker players (well, it's a rest). Grip the normal bridge stick as if it were a cue about a foot from the end. Place your knuckles of the bridge grip hand on the cloth. Raise the head of the bridge until the butt end of the bridge stick touches the cloth. Place your cue stick on the upraised bridge head and shoot.
Personally, I think as long as the player is using the bridge (or two bridges) to support the cue stick there is no problem. That is the intended purpose and a close reading of 1.3 will note that "or" rather than "and" is used.
On a related topic, I've seen a player put a hand towel over the pocket liner of a corner pocket he had to bridge over because that liner was the cheap, gummy variety you see on some brands of tables. He did not want to get gummy crap on his shaft. His opponent tried to call a foul. Similarly, a local room had tables on which the feather strips were a little low so the rail cloth/wood boundary of the rail, where your shaft rests on rail shots, had an exposed sharp edge. Each rail shot at speed would ding the shaft, assuming a standard (Mosconi) rail bridge. I didn't think of it before they fixed the tables, but a rail bridge pad (towel) would have been a reasonable solution.
I suppose that the regulations need some kind of allowance for taking reasonable but perhaps somewhat unusual measures against lousy equipment. The method or measure needs to be available to both players.