If anyone would like to take on the task of creating a reasonable markdown input table format that allows for multiple column spanning with output support into docx, pptx, latex, pdf, and html, *AND* convince john macfarlane to accept the changes into the pandoc code base in 2020, I would be happy to subsidize the effort with $500.

please coordinate with this group, john, and myself if interested.

/iaw

PS: we had some discussions about reasonable input formats in https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/pandoc-discuss/iaw%7Csort:date/pandoc-discuss/1Ljpq0fX9fo/VDoV01uwAAAJ .  this particular format would work great for me, but any other reasonable input format would be ok for me, too.  getting john m on board is really key.