[zimpenfish]

> Requiring like, a byte, for state is hardly a complex requirement.

Add in table header and table cell to get to 128 states. You can probably get it above 256 quite easily. But the storage requirement isn't the point - it's that you have a complicated state machine where you can't just say "in-bold", "out-bold" as suggested because you also need "in-bold-whilst-italic", "in-bold-whilst-header", "in-bold-whilst-header-italic", etc. with the associated transitions.

Or you have a state machine for each attribute. But then `\n` can affect multiple of them at the same time and also require unwinding your state over a bunch of characters. You can say "this isn't beyond a competent developer", yes, but it is a long way from trivial to get correct.

> you are trying to italicize it twice.

Ah, HN mangled my example markdown. I should have remembered that happens.