Looking at the "mock" document (https://github.com/iamgio/quarkdown/tree/main/mock) which is supposed to be a comprehensive and detailed guide for all visual elements, I don't see ways of getting anything other than basic markdown tables. How do you get merged cells? Cell formatting? Typst has some nice ways of implementing sophisticated grids and tables.
Also how do you implement things like different page numbering for front matter content and the main content? In general, the "simplicity" of markdown seems to be taking away a lot of granular control that people use LaTeX and Typst for.
Thanks! The main thing that I had difficulty with, which you can see from the typst source, is the rendering and spacing around inline math symbols. They are rendered as SVGs, which is fine but then copying them doesn't work. Their spacing is sometimes unpredictable so I'll add something like $thick x + y$ to pad on the left hand side. I'm not sure what parts of the math symbol contribute to the dimensions of the SVG and I'm sure it's rather complex, but other than that the experience has been solid.
It's very much worth it, but absolutely not necessary. You can always generate images/figures beforehand and include them in Typst. There are also packages for various styles of diagrams, e.g. diagraph ships with a Graphviz renderer.
There is also CeTZ, which this article uses. It is highly inspired by TikZ and is just as powerful.
Kinda surprising that it isn't mentioned in their feature comparison matrix at all.