The author does a great job of identifying concerns, but the final thesis, that a new standard is the answer and the old standards are fragmented, has been repe

The author does a great job of identifying concerns, but the final thesis, that a new standard is the answer and the old standards are fragmented, has been repeated throughout history. A successful new standard must be so good that all the fragmented platforms scramble to implement it exactly. TeX is the underlying standard in typography for the physical sciences and mathematics (and I hope CS :) ). It's an immovable standard; moving from version 3.0 in 1978 to version 3.1415926 in 2008, exclusively through bugfixes. A web standard the likes of TeX could yield the results the author is looking for. Alas (fortunately?), TeX is rarely used alone. Libraries and macros that build upon it suffer variable stability, consistency, and clarity. To achieve the author's aims, what's needed isn't a call for a new web standard, it's a web standard so good, complete, and obviously stable that everyone can't help but use it.