The Status of Markdown

[Johannes Grosse]

> I've been looking for a system to allow me to create documents, 

> separating content, structure, and formatting, and allow me to go from 

> source to PDF and HTML at the command line.

To me this sounds like you want to use SGML or XML.
Also do have a look at DocBook. 
(But I've never used any of them, so do not expect me to elaborate.
  As always, Google is your friend. ;)

Actually, I think the appropriate approach depends a lot on which quality 
of output you need for your PDFs. If your want high-quality PDFs while you 
can accept degraded HTML, it is possible to directly use LaTeX, of course.

However, if you want a true separation of the logical structure, you will 
probably want to use SGML/DocBook. There should be plethora of conversion 
tools both to LaTeX (for professional looking PDFs) and to HTML.

btw: IMHO, Markdown is not a system that separates content, structure, and 
formatting, but a system which *integrates* these -- sort of an ASCII 
WYSIWYG.


> * How to stucture the Markdown.  Beyond headings, I'd like to

> semanticaly annotate different parts.  (This also helps with

> formatting, as above.)  Should I just create my own tags (eg

> <reminder> <example> <warning>)?

As far as my (poor) understanding of Markdown's design goals
goes, I do not believe that this is what Markdown is intended for.
Markdown is physical markup not logical.
Also, the Markdown community is (for good reasons) quite
hesitant to incorporate new features/tags that blow up the
design. In other words, you are free to add your own tags, but
then it is probably not considered Markdown anymore.

Hope that helped
Jo                     -- formerly known as J.G. :(