I had a look at djot, which adresses all of the author's grievances and I must say... I don't like it.
Sure, it probably is easier to parse, and maybe there are a few edge cases that it does better, but the goal of markdown is to have text that is:
A) human readable and looks good without parsing it
B) can be parsed and presented using different themes
In djot they sacrifice a lot (e.g. we now have to insert empty lines in a nested list?!) of point A for questionable gains at point B. Guess what I as a user care more about?
Markdown accepting a wide range of inputs is not a mistake, it is a feature. If that makes parsing more complex that is an acceptable side effect not a mistake.
I agree that empty line in front of a nested list is ugly. I very often make hierarchical descriptions of things like events or things to do or recipes and that kind of thing would be annoying to have to deal with. I like my lists tight.
I would have tried harder to find some other way to make the grammar simple.
I haven’t seen anything else (in addition) that makes it less “human readable” though.
Sure, it probably is easier to parse, and maybe there are a few edge cases that it does better, but the goal of markdown is to have text that is:
A) human readable and looks good without parsing it
B) can be parsed and presented using different themes
In djot they sacrifice a lot (e.g. we now have to insert empty lines in a nested list?!) of point A for questionable gains at point B. Guess what I as a user care more about?
Markdown accepting a wide range of inputs is not a mistake, it is a feature. If that makes parsing more complex that is an acceptable side effect not a mistake.