This was basically my original approach. However, after working out the math syntax I realized that some things, like the double-backtick inline math, just can't be accomplished without a pre-filter. At that point I decided to just start playing with the parser code.

I also became super-convinced that some level of AST change was necessary to keep things sane, and since I wasn't able to use the existing Math and Image types anyways (they're not attributed), I ultimately just started a new AST type package namespace called "Scholdoc". Everything just evolved from there.