If you got what you're asking for you'd presumably lose access to any fixed function hardware. RE your example, knowing the data format permits automagic hardware accelerated translations between image formats.
You're free to do what you're asking after by simply performing all operations manually in a compute shader. You can manually clip, transform, rasterize, and even sample textures. But you'll lose the implicit use of various fixed function hardware that you currently benefit from.
> If you got what you're asking for you'd presumably lose access to any fixed function hardware.
Are there any fixed functions left that aren't just being implemented by the general compute shader hardware?
I guess the ray tracing stuff would qualify, but that isn't what people are complaining about here.