About "markdown" like syntax in latex

Question

What I mean with markdown like syntax, is for example using *...* or **...** instead of \emph{...} or \(...\) or \begin{blabla}...\end{blabla}.

It seems to be possible to use this "markdown" kind of syntax in latex:

\catcode`\*=\active
\def*#1*{\emph{#1}}

There are many subjectives reasons why one may prefer the one or the other. One may argue that *...* is more readable, someone else may find \emph{...} better readable. One may say it is more clear what is the beginning and what is the end with LaTex syntax, the other may say that you must blind if you don't understand what is the beginning and the end with *...*.

I would like to understand if there are any objective reasons to not use these "markdown like" commands in LaTeX ? I thought that LaTeX may be not really designed to process those kind of commands that doesn't have a clear beginning and end and therefore may cause errors ? Or is it totally fine to use this kind of syntax ?

Another question is, could I somehow define `...` in LaTeX ? I tried:

\catcode`\`=\active
\def`#1`{\emph{#1}}

But this doesn't work.

Answer 1

I suggest you write markdown syntax, and then pre-process your text in pandoc. Alternatively, you may use a text editor (Emacs, Vim) where you can redefine the keyboard and use short-cuts to write LaTeX-markup.

Answer 2

Regarding your second question, it does work:

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\catcode`\`=\active
\def`#1`{\emph{#1}}
`abc`
\end{document}

But this has consequences: verbatim will not work, because the left tick is not in the list of sanitized characters. The same for *. They will remain active also in verbatim environment. Both are sanitized by \nfss@catcodes, though.

And , regarding specifically *, making it active will break all star-variants such as \section* etc...

Babel has a mechanism for making things active and it must patch many commands of the kernel such as the \label+\ref system. However it doesn't pay attention to the possibility of math active characters.

It is surely possible nevertheless to do simple things (I have experienced this in a document where @ is active for circa 120 pages) but it is impossible to ensure world-wide compatibility. Any macro from a package using \scantokens will most certainly be surprised if @ is active.