[constantcrying]

>A few Markdown documents I've converted to PDFs:

These aren't Markdowns converted to PDFs. These are HTML websites rendered as PDF, where at some early point some text with basic formatting was fed in.

>keeping presentation logic and content completely separated while having precise control over layout

Does anyone really want that? I certainly wouldn't want that separation. I want to create some document and not a sophisticated template, so I am always willing to sacrifice generality over momentary needs, if I can't force the layout, then I need to waste time to implement some generality, which I don't need. Completely the wrong approach to document creation.

This looks like you really want to have a web framework, not a document creation system.

[thangalin]

> These aren't Markdowns converted to PDFs

Would you like to see the source Markdown documents? My workflow is:

    Markdown -> XML (XHTML) -> TeX -> PDF

If that isn't converting Markdown into PDF, what would you call it?

> Does anyone really want that?

At time of writing KeenWrite has had over 4,000 downloads. So, maybe? However, my point wasn't whether people want it (besides me). My point was that it is technically possible to keep a Markdown document's content separated from its final presentation form (e.g., PDF).

> This looks like you really want to have a web framework, not a document creation system.

Not really: I want to write in Markdown (or R Markdown) using interpolated variables and generate PDF documents. I have spent about 9 years working on a cross-platform desktop text editor that allows me to do so.

[constantcrying]

>Would you like to see the source Markdown documents?

I am pretty sure I know what they look like from the end result.

My point was that almost all of the design effort wasn't contained in the markdown. So clearly there were at least two major inputs to the documents. But of course you agree with that.

>Not particularly; I want to write in Markdown (or R Markdown) using interpolated variables and generate PDF documents.

To me the total separation only makes sense if you are designing for unknown content. If you control the input of content and formatting, then a closer linkage between both seems superior. Markdown is (intentionally) extremely limited, so everything that markdown can't do needs to be implemented in a general way on the formatting layer. Obviously that is more tedious if you have total separation.

What I meant by "web framework" is that they can't assume content, so need to deal with generality. Essentially what you are writing is a website generator, except with PDF being the end output. But generating general and reusable components doesn't seem to be how I would want to create a document.