Sure, a careful spec is always great. In xml's they clearly overdid it. all the formats/substandards you listed... there is just not a single library that supp

Sure, a careful spec is always great. In xml's they clearly overdid it. all the formats/substandards you listed... there is just not a single library that supports all of the standard. And because implementations are so different, most users just stick to a single C library. That library, btw, is also incomplete and undermaintained. So that's the problem with complex standards: they are hard to implement and support. Nobody does this, unless it is a business-critical matter.