markdown isn't semantic. roff macros allow one to clearly specify that function arguments (Fa) and command line flags (Fl) are different things, even if they render similarly.
Is this really needed in a manpage, though ? AFAIK manpages are ASCII document created with any variation of troff/nroff/groff and piped into less -s. There is no need for any semantical distinction if display is the same, since the best interaction you can have is searching for something.
While I like the venerable look they have, those books aren't what you use daily to document yourself on how your machine works. I was speaking about those manpages we use when we don't know what the letters are for in the itemized output of rsync, for instance.
> While I like the venerable look they have, those books aren't what you use daily to document yourself on how your machine works.
But you can create pretty hard-copy versions of the manpages on your system with groff, the same way these books were created with troff (which groff is a replacement for.)
