That's a very good point. Thing is, markdown (or a subset of it, as on HN) is very limited. Great for short comments, bad when you want to do something a little more complex, like a blog post (I always end up addding some HTML here and there in my markdown blog posts, when I want to include a video for instance).
The other problem is that HN comments and all those markdown-like formats are very ad hoc. If I copy/paste my reddit comments on HN, or the other way around, it won't always work as expected. In both cases, it has to be translated to HTML to be displayed by the browser, too.
So, the context would be: an export format for complex, multi-paragraphs textual documents with meta-information.
So, the context would be: an export format for complex, multi-paragraphs textual documents with meta-information.
If you add the condition that it be human-readable, I admit I am not able to point to an existing format that is obviously better suited for this than XML.
The other problem is that HN comments and all those markdown-like formats are very ad hoc. If I copy/paste my reddit comments on HN, or the other way around, it won't always work as expected. In both cases, it has to be translated to HTML to be displayed by the browser, too.
So, the context would be: an export format for complex, multi-paragraphs textual documents with meta-information.