The original Markdown was actually a very nice readable language: https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/index.text
It didn't have ugly complications like inline links because it was trying to be a readable plaintext language.
But, as often happens, it was coopted by the first popular app to use it, maybe GitHub or StackOverflow, and it became the bloated unreadable garbage it is today.
I was trying the long-form articles on Nostr recently and noticed a few differences between clients. This made me remember something, but I don't remember the source. That Markdown is not exactly standardised.
This also brought org-mode (from Emacs) and orgdown to mind as possible alternatives, and also Gemtext. Gemtext is probably too restricted for that.
https://gitlab.com/publicvoit/orgdown
https://geminiprotocol.net/docs/gemtext-specification.gmi
In a way that is a good thing, forces you to only use the most minimal set of features possible.
It can also backfire horribly.
Asciidoc is the best format I've found so far, but its standardization is also shit.
make a doc spec.
call it nsdoc. for ‘not s*** doc’
Wait for markwhen https://markwhen.com/
nostr:nevent1qqsqqqrl36gfss6vd2588vs4xpkfdd42qp735626ju74rh9ht75x3wgpzdmhxue69uhhwmm59e6hg7r09ehkuef0qgsrhuxx8l9ex335q7he0f09aej04zpazpl0ne2cgukyawd24mayt8grqsqqqqqp2xj28f
The original Markdown looked more like ReStructuredText then.
Hmm, how is today's markdown unreadable garbage?