What would it take to get '<center>' re-admitted to the HTML standard?

I understand the whole presentation vs relation argument that underlies the removal of as a tag from the HTML spec, however:

Some browsers still require/recognize this tag.
There are various issues with the (various) alternatives.
There are some arguable relational uses of the word 'center', as in that this element is to be considered central with respect to its neighbors, with no actual presentational meaning included (although a default CSS styling could be applied).

Would this line of reasoning be enough to bring back into the HTML standard as both a functional and practical way of doing things?

Apologies in advance if this question is provactive, one of my first SO questions.

Solution

To answer the core question here:

What would it take to get '' re-admitted to the HTML standard?

I think it would take a lot.

The thing is this: as it stands, <center> is very much a layout tag. Anything that changes the tag sufficiently to bring it back into contention would simultaneously alter its usage so much that it would be better for backward compatibility to have an entirely new tag instead.

Centering of elements and/or text can be done in CSS with well-established techniques, and with no compatibility issues, even in older browsers, so there's no need for a <center> tag either, any more than there is for <b> or <i> tags.

But I think the main point is that regardless of any merit or lack of merit in the <center> tag, the team responsible for developing the HTML spec have made the decision to deprecate it, and I can't imagine any line of thinking that would change their mind.

Your may be asking 'why not?', but I think their response would be 'why?'. And I don't think there's an answer you could give to that which would be sufficient to sway them.