It seems that you need XML, fellow :-). Have you any experience on that?
You could define a small format that fits your needs, or use a subset of XHTML (for example) and then have it transformed to POD, LaTeX and/or any useful format that comes into your mind: there are a bunch of ready-made modules on CPAN to do that.
Ciao!
--bronto
The very nature of Perl to be like natural language--inconsistant and full of dwim and special cases--makes it impossible to know it all without simply memorizing the documentation (which is not complete or totally correct anyway).
--John M. Dlugosz