Why do we need these special languages just to get adequate typesetting and kerning? In the end it’s just a paragraph of text constrained to a column. Because let’s be honest, this is why most people use LaTeX, not because they enjoy how to place a picture in a bullet list with cryptic syntax. Let’s ignore math for now.

Can’t the browser do this with HTML and CSS? From there you can go even further with standard tooling, generating from markdown.