HTML is, imho, a victim of its own success (and the even bigger success of the web browser / server paradigm in rolling out not just documents - as was the orig

HTML is, imho, a victim of its own success (and the even bigger success of the web browser / server paradigm in rolling out not just documents - as was the original idea, but full blown "apps"). Already the first part (HTML as the basis for universal web publishing of all kinds of documents) is quite unprecedented in scope. Did the print world of physical books and newpapers ever produce a global "semantics and shit" paradigm? No. Within the walled gardens of a major publisher or the walls of a monastery reproducing manuscripts there may have been consistently followed rules. In other words: we never had anything better. The current focus on "apps" is just turning a difficult situtation into a hopeless one. There might some limited scope for something more rational / pleasant in the world of CMS's, together, e.g., with the adoption of HTMX type technologies. If your pages/documents are derived more or less from a standard schema in the backend then its is quite efficient to develop a corresponding structure of components on the frontend.