I would like the option to convert bold and italics to MMD format during compile. It would seem to fit well in the Plain Text Conversions section of the Transformations tab.
I compile to various formats for various reasons. For most of those formats, I need to leave the bold and italics as rich text formatting in the manuscript. So I would prefer not to convert them in the manuscript, but instead convert them as part of compiling to MMD.
I suppose I could convert in the manuscript, then choose Convert Markdown to bold and italics in the Transformations tab when I export to a rich text format. But converting the manuscript is an extra manual step. Admittedly, it’s a very small extra step, but introduces an opportunity for me to goof things up, and one of my personalities (her name is Bruce) can’t seem to pass up such opportunities.