I think about this not so much as a "bevel orientation and plane type" issue, but rather as a "cutting angle and task" issue. A 45 degree angle is good for general hand planing, so in a bench plane with a 45 degree frog, bevel down means that the upper (un-beveled) face of the blade is at 45 degrees to the work surface (so the actual cutting angle is 45 degrees). Standard block planes have a lower bed angle, so bevel up gets the actual cutting angle to around 45 degrees. For end grain a lower cutting angle produces better results, so low-bed-angle planes - both bench and block planes - are produced in which blades are mounted bevel-up. This configuration, plus skewing the lateral angle of the plane during use, lowers the cutting angle. On the other hand, complicated grain patterns (as in highly figured boards) plane better with a high cutting angle. Standard bevel-up planes work well here when the blade is ground at an even steeper angle.