I think you are right. All the most successful standards have described existing implementations. They didn't describe the universes they hoped it would be in t

I think you are right. All the most successful standards have described existing implementations. They didn't describe the universes they hoped it would be in the future, they described the situation on the ground now, perhaps with some compromises in place to try to get everybody on the same page. Look at Common Lisp, SQL, POSIX.