Me too. This is exactly the area where something like Markdown should have flourished. At worst it looks like plain text with a few _ and * characters sprinkle

Me too. This is exactly the area where something like Markdown should have flourished. At worst it looks like plain text with a few _ and * characters sprinkled around, it has beautiful clean HTML output and some terminals support italic and bold fonts; win/win/win. Pity that boat has long since sailed.