I can tell you, from having been involved in a number of the discussions on the mailing list, that these points were definitely discussed. There were a number of people on your side. HTML subsets were discussed, as was using markdown (or a markdown subset). In the end a simple link syntax was chosen along with a few optional items. The simple link syntax is much more than a stripped down html 1.0... it is gopher but with a better syntax that is easier for non-developers to generate content with.

Gemini isn't perfect and is definitely a work in progress that serves a purpose and fits a niche. In my opinion it is geared more to converting people from gopher to gemini rather than from the web to gemini, though I hope we'll get some of both :)