I was wondering what prevented the implementation of a MarkDown system *in* (La)TeX? I know that pandoc does a conversion of MarkDown with extra features to LaTeX. I also know that many are happy with the way LaTeX is right now, so please do not feel offended.

In particular I was wondering why stuff like `->` or `=>` cannot be translated to `\rightarrow` or `\Rightarrow` and similar transformations along with the usual MarkDown features. After all to me it seems that (La)Tex after all is a way to mark-up plain text in a way that it can be rendered neatly for printing devices. I also know that there's LyX and TeXmacs but those have left the plain-text approach of tex.

In particular I'm genuine curious *if* and *why* one could not implement MarkDown features right in LaTeX, after all TeX is Turing complete, no? Does it in some way break the existing system in a way I do not see?

There's a lot that could make writing text a little more *pleasant* on the eyes. For example, writing a theorem like so:

```
THEOREM: ...

PROOF: ...

Next paragraph continues after two new lines...

```

and similarly for definitions lemmata, you name it. Again please don't get me wrong. There are enormous amounts of useful commands in (La)TeX. As it is now, (La)TeX does do some of these transformations already. E.g. turning --- into an em-dash or treating a blank line as the separation of two paragraphs. And modern (La)TeX can deal with unicode thus not necessarily requiring the ASCII-fication of Greek Letters. There will always be more obscure things one wants to do with (La)TeX, but what is preventing the system from incorporating features like these? Or am I missing something completely and this is possible already?