markdown is exactly the kind of minimalism i hate, it is more restrictive than simplifying. actually i am fine with markdown so long as it is not parsed by a markdown parser -- it makes a lot more sense as a *microsyntax* and not an actual markup language. you can encode some limited semantics with it (things like emphasis), but you cannot encode any significant structure except what might be inferred implicitly by e.g. heading levels. i would not want to author everything in markdown.