Ask HN: Simpler alternatives to LaTeX for note system

Wondering if others could share some ideas about typing up notes - workflow, software, typesetting system wise? Preferably options that will output to PDF and are command-line oriented.

Currently have some notes in mostly plaintext with some LaTeX markup in it. It renders fine, but its difficult to maintain.

I'd like to try out a different workflow software / typesetting wise. ConTexT seems to be a viable option. The sytax is an improvement for me anyways.

I've looked into lightweight markup but some don't seem very flexible or have long dependencies. Org-Mode might be a good choice but I'm mostly used to working with Vim.

Wiki and Note-taking systems (notebooks) systems don't appeal to me much, though I've seen they are popular.

There are several on-going or deprecated projects that are of interest, mostly 'Tex engine replacements. (I've spent more than a few hours searching through many linked on Wikipedia like here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typesetting and some more obscure ones. I like some of the Scheme and OCAML projects, but all seem to be difficult to compile on several systems I tried.

So, other than ConTeXt, I'm considering Org-Mode.

Is there another option being overlooked?