> What I want from my typesetting language is "typsetting completeness". While there might be sane defaults, I want to be able to control every decision made by the typesetter by escaping and grouping things as needed. If the language doesn't have these features, by definition, it is not complete.

Then LaTeX is not complete. Macros don’t have to respect the grouping provided by curly braces in math mode, therefore you only have the illusion of control. Nobody in practice actually inspects the full package dependency chain needed to typeset a nontrivial document.

Here’s a proof of concept: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/748416/how-can-i-aut...