I agree with you on Markdown tables. They're pretty horrendous to write by hand. I wonder if there's an alternative that would be easier? Maybe something that's essentially a CSV embedded in a Markdown file? I'm sure CSV has some edge cases that could be a problem, but it's probably a decent 80/20 (or better) solution if you just want to make a quick table by hand.
CSV are no better than markdown tables to edit by hand. However they’re convenient in that you don’t have to do that and can use a spreadsheet.
rST allows using a csv as a table and that’s mighty convenient. An other thing that’s mighty convenient is rST allows rendering a nested list as a table. It’s not amazing because each list item is a row rather than a column, but it is a lot less confusing than having to edit a markdown table if you’re not in a table-aware editor.
Worth noting that Emacs makes Markdown tables pretty easy to create and format cleanly for plain text viewing, and other editors may/could/should do the same.
I use Sublime almost 100% now-a-days; and, it for sure isn't as nice as Emacs for editing MD tables, but multi-cursor editing does about 80% of the heavy-lifting for MD tables. I guess I could conjecture someone objecting about "really big" tables and editing them ... but, is MD really the right choice in that case?
