@praetor I remember early Web design guides that complained about the limitations of HTML that made it difficult to control the user's experience.

Preventing people from controlling the user's experience was part of the point.

I remember the 90s, how word processor formats were, by design, incompatible. SGML was invented for archivists, to allow the creation of documents that were free of vendor lock-in and obsolescence. HTML was derived from that.