I've never understood why anyone uses the number of pages of the reference document as an argument. It feels like making fun of the hard work of people put into making the reference. The bulk of the reference probably consists of minor details that can be skipped but can also be extremely helpful when you actually need them. Should we make worse references just to appease some bean counting?
Unless you're using the size of the standard as a rough measure of the complexity of creating a new implementation of the standard. If you need to provide an implementation of the standard library, then that contributes to the amount of effort required.
At least in C++ - after the initial spec, the language was literally _built_ on exploiting those minor details. A lot, if not most, of C++'s magic and its ugliness goes through those weird minor details.
