You and I both. Unfortunately any competing system has a nearly insurmountable barrier to entry. Kind of "Worse is Better" taken to insane extremes.
Unfortunately any competing system has a nearly insurmountable barrier to entry.
The best approach would be to build something completely backwards compatible. That is, it allows easy embedding of LaTeX code and optionally compiles out to .tex.
The recent document publishing efforts at SIAI would not have been possible without the assistance of dedicated volunteers. This new project is the perfect opportunity to help out lesswrong while giving you an excuse to catch up on (or revisit) your reading of some foundational rational thinking material. As an added bonus every post reviewed will save the world with 3.5*epsilon probability.
We need volunteers who are willing to read some sequence posts and have an eye for detail. Anyone interested in contributing should contact me at cameron.taylor [at] singinst [dot] org.
For those more interested in academic papers we also have regular publications (and re-publications) that need proofreading and editing before they are released.