I don't understand the argument for rST.
If you need more control than Markdown can deliver, then write your stuff in HTML to begin with.
I have written a ton of documents in plain HTML, including slide decks, documentation for customers, reports for customers, a blog. I have not written a book yet. If I were to write a book, I would use LaTeX because then the typographic fidelity of the output would be my paramount objective.
Plain HTML is actually pretty awesome. It allows you to encode the structure of the document and then style if however you wanted. When I started in this business, you had to use LaTeX for that kind of flexibility. HTML has gotten a bad rep, I think, because it's dark side of including Javascript and a ton of frameworks for whatever perceived goal looks easy and seductive and then forces you into serfdom by obstructing future reuse.
If you stick with the bare minimum HTML you'll be fine. Better than fine actually. Text processors can these days usually import bare metal HTML just fine if need be. They only fail if you give them the "processed food" output of some kind of rendering pipeline.
The only other system for documentation we haven't covered in this thread is troff for man pages :-) Any takers?
I have written a ton of documents in plain HTML, including slide decks, documentation for customers, reports for customers, a blog. I have not written a book yet. If I were to write a book, I would use LaTeX because then the typographic fidelity of the output would be my paramount objective.
Plain HTML is actually pretty awesome. It allows you to encode the structure of the document and then style if however you wanted. When I started in this business, you had to use LaTeX for that kind of flexibility. HTML has gotten a bad rep, I think, because it's dark side of including Javascript and a ton of frameworks for whatever perceived goal looks easy and seductive and then forces you into serfdom by obstructing future reuse.
If you stick with the bare minimum HTML you'll be fine. Better than fine actually. Text processors can these days usually import bare metal HTML just fine if need be. They only fail if you give them the "processed food" output of some kind of rendering pipeline.
The only other system for documentation we haven't covered in this thread is troff for man pages :-) Any takers?