True. Wide-adoption makes markdown hard to beat.

However, I _would_ like to see a better alternative. My #1 feature request would be simple styling (beyond bold, italic, etc.) Specifically, some way to compactly color and highlight text. Something like [C#4c4|aaa]Text[/C] maybe where format is #{text-color-rgb}|{background-color-rgb} where background is optional. Likewise, something similar for font like [F:10pt,monospace]Test[/F]. Extra credit for named styles: [$danger=C#484|#cc8] and then [S:$danger]I'm dangerous[/S].