As someone who was not programming when many of the customizations introduced in the article were introduced: this seems like a cautionary tale that goes against the wisdom about "competing standards": https://xkcd.com/927/
The desire to unify formats' competing back-compatibility needs created something that was (because of the standards conflicts/schisms/reunifications) extremely sub-par for most use cases, but (because of the time spent baking common interfaces) just usable enough that it remained the primary basis for storage formats for, if the author is to believed, far longer than it should have.
I wonder how many other tools that are venerated because of their age and ubiquity are similarly decrepit and broken when you peel back the curtain?
The desire to unify formats' competing back-compatibility needs created something that was (because of the standards conflicts/schisms/reunifications) extremely sub-par for most use cases, but (because of the time spent baking common interfaces) just usable enough that it remained the primary basis for storage formats for, if the author is to believed, far longer than it should have.
I wonder how many other tools that are venerated because of their age and ubiquity are similarly decrepit and broken when you peel back the curtain?