“Paths represent the geometry of the outline of an object.” He read the sentence over and over again but could not grasp what exactly bothered him. The document itself was clear and crisp as ever, and the standard it represented could still change the future of the World Wide Web. They had developed a lightweight, scalable vector format, a language for describing two­dimensional graphics. It opened up the kind of applications he had been dreaming of since the early nineties and he sometimes felt frustrated that their work wasn’t embraced with more enthusiasm. But he had also been around long enough to know that a good standard did not necessarily mean it was going to be implemented just like that. “Paths represent the outline of a shape which can be filled, stroked, used as a clipping path, or any combination of the three.” His pencil drifted over the paper. It all came down to objects in the end. It was as if they had betrayed the line.”

Femke Snelting, Scenes of Pleasure and Relief