@aoudad: This syntax violates the Prime Directive. It’s worth reading the discussion in that thread.
Even though it’s spelled out both by Gruber when he introduced Markdown and by @jgm in the introduction to CommonMark, a lot of ideas and proposals on this forum lose sight of it, and it confuses efforts to solidify and advance this standard. Maybe create a topic titled “The Philosophy and Spirit of Markdown” or “The Markdown Prime Directive”, and pin it to the top of the forum? @jgm, @codinghorror, what do you think? I’d be happy to make the initial post (I’ve been drafting something about this), though it might be best if it came from John. I realize, John, that you’ve already done this in What Is Markdown? Maybe just post and pin that at the top of the forum?
I think it important that the philosophy and spirit stay in the forefront of everyone’s minds as we try to get to v1.0 as well to v1.1 or v2. Any new directions that ditch the original philosophy are fine, but they shouldn’t be called Markdown.