so, i think one of my errors was to not start by acknowledging that this is absolutely correct:

> It's the widespread use of raster graphics for everything that's relatively more recent, and this has been enabled by the use of complex compression to achieve reasonable file sizes for large images. Those compression algorithms make a similar tradeoff to vector formats in that they save space at the expense of computation time.

> I'm not sure if anyone has done any organized experiments, but it would be interesting to see some stats on render time of SVGs in comparison to decompression time for PNGs or JPEGs. My suspicion is that relative performance is highly context-specific, and that there's no general factor that makes either consistently faster than the other.

this is in fact one of the major points coueignoux makes in his 01975 doctoral dissertation, which knuth credited (apparently erroneously) as being the origin of the idea of outline fonts. the letterforms of coueignoux's 'france' system weren't the first vector graphics file format (that would probably be g-code) but they were important pioneers

there are other things i take more issue with. you said:

> On the surface, this doesn't seem quite right. Vector graphics were used ubiquitously in legacy applications where storage, memory, or bandwidth were constrained. Most early graphical computer games were only viable due to vector rendering techniques (Sierra's adventures, for example), and lots of early graphical frontends to network resources were entirely vector-based (NAPLPS, RIPScrip, etc.); Flash was primarily vector-based.

and this is somewhat true. what i was taking issue with was mostly something you didn't actually say and probably don't believe, so it was pretty unfair of me to project it onto you; i thought you were saying that displaying vector graphics on raster displays in the 01970s and 01980s was faster than displaying raster graphics on raster displays. but you said where storage, memory, or bandwidth were constrained, not cpu time. and of course it is absolutely correct that in the period of time when naplps (01983), king's quest ii (01985), and ripscrip (01992) came out, people did often use vector graphics to save storage, memory, or bandwidth. that wasn't the only reason they did it (for example, i used autocad on an ibm pc xt, which used vector graphics because the entire computer with its crude cga screen, second text-only screen, keyboard, and mouse was only a way to coax the pen plotter to plot out a high-quality drawing) but it was a common one

if you had an actual vector output device like the pdp-1's scope, the computer-output-on-microfilm device for which hershey designed his now-ubiquitous fonts, the imlac, the tektronix 4014 serial terminal, a pen plotter, or the evans & sutherland lds-1, all of which are from long before leisure suit larry, using vector graphics could save cpu time too. these definitely were not 'limited to industrial equipment (old-school oscilloscopes, radar monitors, etc.) niche CRT-based arcade games, and the occasional novelty laser display,' but they were mostly expensive and specialized. however, i had a cheap letter-sized hp pen plotter at home when i was a kid, and bought another used one to play around with in the late 01990s

i have a hard time describing those lying scumbags prodigy (01984) or the naplps they used (again, 01983) as 'early graphical frontends to network resources'. people had been providing graphical frontends to computer network resources since nls (01969) if not sage (01958) — generally using vector displays up to the 01970s, at which point there was a major shift toward raster-display systems like the knight tv (early, about 01974) https://gunkies.org/wiki/Knight_TV_system

flash, of course, is from 01996, so it's not an early graphical frontend to networked resources by any stretch of the imagination; it didn't exist until six years after the world-wide web. i agree that being the only way to do vector graphics on the web was a major reason people used it. (the only way except vrml, which nobody supported, and starting in 01998, vml, but only in msie.)

but people used flash for many other reasons as well. text layout in flash is much simpler and more predictable than in html, though, by the same token, supports graceful degradation and responsivity very poorly. if flash was supported at all, you could count on your fonts being supported, because you could embed them in the flash file, which html couldn't do. animation in flash doesn't require programming, so it was much more accessible to nontechnical users. when you were programming, until chrome launched (in 02008), actionscript was much faster than browser javascript. flash could play sounds; browser javascript couldn't (well, there was <bgsound> and <embed>, but those weren't really suitable for game sound effects or synchronizing audio with animation). flash could play video clips; browser javascript couldn't

given these vast differences between flash and the browser environment outside of flash, i don't think it makes sense to reduce them to vector vs. raster. the reasons allyourbase or strong bad email or thousands of terrible brochureware ecommerce sites had to be done in flash instead of html had little or nothing to do with vector vs. raster