Mark, indeed, in the email from Vincent Lefevre you linked to, his entire argument was:  (a) we already specified what happens when the base is a zero; so, (b) for each of the six pow(a_zero, y) cases we specified, derive a matching rule for an inf base via:

pow(an_inf, y) = 1/pow(1/an_inf, y) = 1/pow(the_same_sign_zero, y)

Looking at the other msgs in that thread, everyone found that instantly compelling.

Pierre, give up ;-)  These standards are years old already, so it's exceedingly unlikely any specified behavior will ever change again, for "backward compatibility" reasons alone.