I was immediately put off by the syntax, too. We don't have to do strict Markdown, but even Markdown is transparently extensible in HTML. It is entirely feasib

I was immediately put off by the syntax, too. We don't have to do strict Markdown, but even Markdown is transparently extensible in HTML. It is entirely feasible to write publishing quality documents in HTML/CSS3, and thus, Markdown. I would love to see something like Markdown, but well-suited for typesetting, but with a transparent backend scripting language for more in-depth tasks. Scribble looks like a good start: http://docs.racket-lang.org/scribble/index.html http://docs.racket-lang.org/scribble/index.html Currently, I use org-mode and LaTeX-export for this. It works well enough, but a native integrated environment would open this to a much wider audience.