I've compiled a little list of fandoc niggles that keep catching me out:

** *This is italic and bold* **

* **This is not** *

* This is not even italic *

[I want to use square brackets without warnings and errors]

([links in brackets don't work]`http://fantom-lang.org`)

[ ![Image links]`http://example.org/fantom.png` ]`http://fantom.org/forum/topic/2388`

 pre>
   Where did
 all my text go?
 <pre

 Which is bad for things like:

 pre>
        ___________
 In --> | ASCII ART | --> Out
        -----------
 <pre

Links in Headings have NO    [SPACE]`#` 
----

And this is how the above actually renders:

---

This is italic and bold

This is not

* This is not even italic *

[I want to use square brackets without warnings and errors]

(links in brackets don't work)

![Image links ]`http://fantom.org/forum/topic/2388`

  Where did
all my text go?

Which is bad for things like:

        ___________
In --> | ASCII ART | --> Out
        -----------

Links in Headings have NOSPACE

This a good list you captured. I pushed a bunch of changes which fix most of these:

1. emphasis with nested strong - fixed
2. Square brackets - not going to change this behavior since the brackets are essentially reserved for so many control operations and its already a fuzzy grammer to start off it. Markdown allows backslash escapes for special chars, so might consider that eventually, but not going to add that right now
3. Links inside parens - fixed this behavior (was originally to allow code snippets to work ok, but think in that case you just have to single quote)
4. Image links - enhanced to support this, see docs - whitesapce matters (can't have any)
5. Pre section indention - fixed
6. Links in heading - this actually isn't even supported since headings are parsed as a single block of text. Perhaps it should be an error, but decided better to just leave it along. But essentially any inline formatting in a heading is not supported so avoid that