http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/pamphlet/2014/08/29/switching-to-markdown-for-scholarly-article-production/
I really, really like the idea of writing in Markdown and then using tools like Pandoc to convert to other formats. I tried it and ran into a couple difficulties. First, it's still clunky for me to get citations and references to work anywhere near as smoothly as they do when I use Mendeley's plugin for Word, which puts me just a few keystrokes away from my personal database of 1000+ references. Second, I still need tools for peer editing and I'm not crazy about making them use unfamiliar tools. I love that Draft is built to do peer review, but it's really not built for 50+ page academic documents. My peers use Word and Google Docs and I've found that if I'm required to output Word anyway, putting up with Word during the writing process has been slightly less annoying than worrying about my Markdown conversions and choice of reviewing tools. That said, I'm hopeful that Markdown catches on, as I much prefer writing for the web and screen than thinking I'm still writing for 8.5"x11" sheets of paper.
I really, really like the idea of writing in Markdown and then using tools like Pandoc to convert to other formats. I tried it and ran into a couple difficulties. First, it's still clunky for me to get citations and references to work anywhere near as smoothly as they do when I use Mendeley's plugin for Word, which puts me just a few keystrokes away from my personal database of 1000+ references. Second, I still need tools for peer editing and I'm not crazy about making them use unfamiliar tools. I love that Draft is built to do peer review, but it's really not built for 50+ page academic documents. My peers use Word and Google Docs and I've found that if I'm required to output Word anyway, putting up with Word during the writing process has been slightly less annoying than worrying about my Markdown conversions and choice of reviewing tools. That said, I'm hopeful that Markdown catches on, as I much prefer writing for the web and screen than thinking I'm still writing for 8.5"x11" sheets of paper.