Back in the 80s/90s I spent time trying to standardize the \special commands used by TeX. I remember thinking color would be a simple thing and then discovering

Back in the 80s/90s I spent time trying to standardize the \special commands used by TeX. I remember thinking color would be a simple thing and then discovering the whole rathole that's RGB vs CMY vs CMYK vs HSB. The problem of doing simple in-line graphics was another issue that raised its ugly head as I realized that I was facing essentially reinventing PostScript once you face the question of what happens at the corner of two lines. I don't think much if any of what I came with was ever implemented and the migration in the twenty-first century of TeX to pdftex then xetex and luatex made it all moot since there was no longer the plethora of dvi-to-printer drivers in the mix.