ringman,
Answering your original question more precisely...
My standard rectangular tolerance problem involves sheet metal. Holes can be punched in sheet metal to within around +/-.005" from any edge. They can bend the sheet metal to a tolerance of around +/-.015". My solution to putting tapped holes in such a part is to use the PEM floating nuts, which correct some of the misalignment.
With the PEM nut, I still require the holes to be located inside a diameter. The manufacturing errors are likely to be distributed in a rectangle or ellipse, but this does not affect my requirement.
If I wanted to use +/- tolerances, I could specify a rectangle, but I would accomplish very little. A GDT positional tolerance of .030"DIA works out to around +/-.01". If I stretched that into a rectangle with a +/-.005" tolerance in one direction, the othogonal one would be +/-.014". Every possible combination of this is allowed by the .030"DIA positional tolerance, which is why people here keep advocating it.
JHG