The whole point of CSS is/was to standardize presentation across browsers.
CSS was created to standardize how to deal with presentation, but that doesn't mean every website should look exactly the same on every device or in every browser. The era of attempting to do that is over.
text-wrap: pretty is a great example of progressive enhancement [1]: it's a great way to add some polish to a website but if the user's device doesn't support it, they can still access all of the content on the site and be none the wiser.
If you read the CSS specifications, browser makers, in some cases, are allowed to use platform-specific heuristics to determine whether or not to execute certain features. Downloading web fonts works like this—browsers fallback to system fonts if a webfont doesn't download within 3 seconds.
It makes sense that text-wrap: pretty should be one of those. If your smartphone is low on power and the signal isn't that great, you can forgo expertly wrapped text and elegant hyphenation in order to view the webpage as quickly as possible.
>CSS was created to standardize how to deal with presentation, but that doesn't mean every website should look exactly the same on every device or in every browser. The era of attempting to do that is over.
For every device I agree but that was never the goal of CSS. It is meant to respond to the device's constraints such as screen dimensions and device type (desktop, mobile, print) using eg. media queries. In every browser I do think they should try to accomplish the same thing. Even if the exact algorithms used are different, the intended result should be agreed upon.
>but that doesn't mean every website should look exactly the same on every device or in every browser
That was the point. Maybe Gen Z changed its meaning now, but that was the main premise. There was even the Acid3 test and similar stuff.