Well, yes, if you dumb your document down to the level of &quot;markdown&quot;, it&#x27;s not hard to grind them out as plain text with some styling.  You can write HTML in that style, too. People did that 20 years ago.[1]  That was the original vision of HTML.<p>Some people wanted to stop there, and limit HTML to describing the semantics of a document, not its visual appearance. They lost.[2]<p>Pandoc doesn&#x27;t really use &quot;markdown&quot;.  It uses &quot;enhanced markdown&quot;:<p><i>&quot;Pandoc’s enhanced version of Markdown includes syntax for footnotes, tables, flexible ordered lists, definition lists, fenced code blocks, superscripts and subscripts, strikeout, metadata blocks, automatic tables of contents, embedded LaTeX math, citations, and Markdown inside HTML block elements.&quot;</i><p>Pandoc&#x27;s &quot;markdown&quot; now has roughly the feature set of HTML 3.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.animats.com&#x2F;papers&#x2F;articulated&#x2F;articulated.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.animats.com&#x2F;papers&#x2F;articulated&#x2F;articulated.html</a>
[2] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.w3.org&#x2F;People&#x2F;Raggett&#x2F;book4&#x2F;ch02.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.w3.org&#x2F;People&#x2F;Raggett&#x2F;book4&#x2F;ch02.html</a>