That post would be interesting to read.
I don't see how it would alleviate the issue.
I think without an interim step to force the assignment to a bit type variable it will perform the operation as a byte.

I might take a look through the PBP library macros for Logical and bitwise NOTs to see if there is another macro that would hand the situation. If there is, it would be a matter of what syntax would cause the compiler to pick that macro instead.