This isn't a competitor to markdown. It is a competitor to JSON. Not sure what brashtag does that JSON does not. I'm not at all convinced that brashtag is simpler than JSON.
As you have noticed it is poor substitute for json. It would be cumbersome to write config file in brashtag.
> This isn't a competitor to markdown.
You can write blog post in markdown. You can write it just as elegantly in brashtag. Only brashtag does not convert the doc to html for you. It just gives you tree. You write a program that processes the tree and produces html.
Example,
Markdown: # Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet
Consectetur _adipiscing_ elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam.
---
Brashtag:
#h1{Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet}
Consectetur #u{adipiscing} elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt #b{ut labore et dolore} magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam.
OR you could write
#really big title{Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet}
Consectetur #super duper underline{adipiscing} elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt #emphsize{ut labore et dolore} magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam.
e.g.:
``` ## <p style="margin-left=4em;font-family: 'Courier,mono"> Life is death's way of giving what it kills time to grow in. —w.s. burroughs. </p> ```
Necessarily, inline HTML tags, attributes and CSS is carefully sanitized by engines that support this. And, unfortunately the extent of sanitization, and actual supported tags vary from engine to engine. But it's there, and it is widely supported, and relatively predictable for basic HTML formatting. And mostly manages to excise ever-evolving ways to inject javascript into standard CSS.
HNs markdown engine doesn't support inline HTML; but Github's markdown engine does.