STE used to cost $2900 USD for the print copy. So . . baby steps, I guess? STE, unlike Simplified English or International English or its many cousins, has wha

STE used to cost $2900 USD for the print copy. So . . baby steps, I guess? STE, unlike Simplified English or International English or its many cousins, has what I like to call the "ISO Kiss of Death". Basically, with IKoD, you get a cabal that takes over a spec, and then it defends the spec like a kung fu master defends his secret style. Thing is, the cabal also mandates how documents get written, so now you have to go to the secret Kung Fu School to learn the Secret Style if you want to, yknow, deliver a product. This can go on for decades, multiple decades, before something maybe breaks the chain - some busybody in procurement, or a major national embarassment, or an overactive journalist revealing how making a PDF file managed to cost two hundred million dollars. Or someone raising their hand and saying, um, sirs, very sorry to interrupt, but this is all common capability in the Lands Outside the Secret Temple. Fighters from secret temples never amount to much.