This spec is not strict enough. Okay, that came out wrong. While I understand why one would want any input to pass (web comment from non-technical users), I h

This spec is not strict enough. Okay, that came out wrong. While I understand why one would want any input to pass (web comment from non-technical users), I have experienced several failures (wrong emphasis, missing link, weird unintended brackets…) just because the original markdown.pl didn't warn me about some obvious mistake I made. We need a strict mode, where paragraphs cannot be interrupted, where fenced code blocks must end by a fence (not just the end of the file), duplicate or missing references must be signalled… That, and many other precautions could turn Markdown into a serious and reliable document format. Besides, this tolerance is complicating the grammar. I don't mind context sensitivity nor ambiguity (parser generators can now deal with both), but I do mind the sheer size. If you ask me, a formal spec (one that can be treated as a DSL and translated mechanically into a parser), should not take more than 300 lines. More than that is probably too complicated to implement, or even use.