LaTeX is more like XML or HTML than Markdown or rST. One could duplicate the functionality of LaTeX with a superset of rST or Markdown. Case in point: Sphinx.

LaTeX is more like XML or HTML than Markdown or rST. One could duplicate the functionality of LaTeX with a superset of rST or Markdown. Case in point: Sphinx. That's essentially writing your documents in a combination of rST and Python.