Comment by yencabulator

rST was better at structured content with its directives etc, but it was too complicated for non-techies, too much repeated punctuation and careful indenting.

Now we have markdown which is unable to express the structured parts, with a flea market of less-good extensions, some raw HTML snippets, and in general have lowered the bar to not even attempt the things rST is capable of.

Instead of rST, the markdown ecosystem is leaning toward "some fenced code blocks are magic", with user-unfriendly goop in them that is hidden by the UI (when one happens to use the one blessed UI for that flavor). And that approach can't solve inline directives.