Markdown was intended to be simple enough that everybody could roll their own code to translate to their "real" markup language of choice. Everyone did, but bec

Markdown was intended to be simple enough that everybody could roll their own code to translate to their "real" markup language of choice. Everyone did, but because markdown was a hack in the first place, the quality of implementations is pretty inconsistent. (Which is fine, because rolling your own markdown -> html translator is easy -- much easier than writing your own html -> anything translator -- and well within the reach of even beginner programmers.) I avoid markdown because I don't like markup in general (and because I think styling of text is rarely useful), but if I need to work with it, I will whip something up to do the translation. A couple lines of sed is sufficient for handling whatever tiny subset of markdown is actually present.