I don't consider bows 56 or 58 inches as short. I would say a short recurve is 52 inches and under. And what do we call a 60 or 62 inch bow?
They aren't short, and they aren't really long; so are they medium bows, or medium long, or kinda, sorta short.
The bow needs to satisfy the guy pulling the string, for the purpose in which he intends to use it. For my draw, just a tad under 28", I like a 58" bow for hunting. If I'm going to the field range, I'll probably take a recurve over 62" and maybe even 66". The longer ones are more comfortable over a long shooting period....at least to me. We are talking recurves here. I like longbows to be long.... 66 to 68 inches.
For many years, many years ago, we shot those 52" rascals and did very well with them. We didn't realize they were hard to shoot 8^).