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For the writers markdown diffability is bad since it mixes style and content

Strange to call markdown neutral given how it's tied to HTML, and that you could just as well convert your "non-neutral" rich format to the same targets

How is Markdown _Super_<span style="color:blue">Widget</span> easier to globally find&replace vs. anything else that you create an index for in a database?

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I'm sure Markdown isn't perfect, but when you mentioned a "richer document format" I assumed you meant something like MS Word docx or rtf files.

If not markdown, what would you suggest?

Yes, those two would work better for the writers since then they'd be able to WYSIWYG-edit individual documents in other editors while having the potentially better style/content diffability/batch renaming etc in this one (and that would also help avoid the common mistake of having two separate views just because the underlying format is plaintexty)

Although personally I hope for a modern rich-text CRDT-based format that would also enable collaboration, but don't know of any specific one in that area

> If not markdown, what would you suggest?

Not as rich as LaTeX but more powerful than Markdown: .rst and .adoc

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