Pandoc is fantastic, the parsing code is clear, and its extensions to markdown are well thought out.

It's not just a markdown->everything converter, though. My install understands these:

Input formats: native, json, markdown, markdown+lhs, rst, rst+lhs, textile, html, latex, latex+lhs

Output formats: native, json, html, html5, html+lhs, html5+lhs, s5, slidy, dzslides, docbook, opendocument, latex, latex+lhs, beamer, beamer+lhs, context, texinfo, man, markdown, markdown+lhs, plain, rst, rst+lhs, mediawiki, textile, rtf, org, asciidoc, odt, docx, epub

You also need to add that the parser of Pandoc is not regular expression based. It is a very robust parser, parsing the document in an internal abstract tree you can easily modify. You can also adapt the parser to your needs with simple extensions. You can then get very nice outputs in HTML or PDF[1]. As it is a nice command line tool, it is easy to generate everything with a simple Makefile too.

[1]: http://notes.ceondo.com/mongrel2-zmq-paas/

+1 for Pandoc. It's awesome.

Also, it needs to be mentioned that Pandoc supports its own set of (IMO) sensible extensions / defaults to Gruber markdown [1].

[1] http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/README.html#pandocs-markdow...

Yes I came here also to add a +1 to ensuring that whatever standards discussions would include Pandoc and it's awesome implementation and converter.

From the link, scroll down to 'Pandoc’s Markdown' about a third of the way down the page for all the details. http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/README.html

+1 for Pandocs extensions. I can verify that is sufficient for producing a doctoral dissertion (in German; not my own…), via LaTeX. The way Pandoc handles citations, footnotes, tables(!), etc is just delightful.

Yet another "Yay!" for pandoc. It is just so good.