alt Hacker NewsMarkdown is a beautiful demonstration that document structure syntax can/should be simple. What most people do in Word is better done by just adjusting the document rendering/style, not the document structure...
I love the idea of extending markdown to include more visual elements, but if you're not careful you just reinvent HTML.
Here's my personal take on extending table syntax for charts. Easy to write, and if a renderer/parser understands the syntax you get a beautiful chart, and if it doesn't you get a table with slightly weird headings:
| Month::x | Revenue::y1 | Cost::y2 |
| -------- | ----------: | -------: |
| Jan | $82,000 | $51,000 |
| Feb | $91,000 | $56,000 |
| Mar | $95,000 | $58,000 |
Tables are the one thing in markdown where I’d prefer to emphasize edit ergonomics over good looking unrendered text. Making a quick manual change like adding column to a markdown table is just unfun. I’ve always thought a json like format that a linter can organize would be better.
Which is all to say I really like the table proposal here - adding an optional linter to make the data look tabular in unrendered markdown will make it even better