Is [prest][1] the perl version of the reST processor referred to in the text?
It seems to be reasonably well-maintained to me, and differences between it and
"standard" reST are pretty minor (a fairly exhaustive list, taken from the 
prest docs, is at the end of this page).

[1]: http://search.cpan.org/~nodine/Text-Restructured-0.003024/

In addition, reST appears to allow raw HTML pass-through with the `raw` 
directive, though I think a better solution would be expanding the format plugin
interface. --Ethan

An exhaustive list of differences between prest and "standard" reST follows:

* fewer alternatives for bullet lists (only "+", "*" and "-")
* escaped colons are not allowed in field names
* RCS keyword processing is only activated on "recognized bibliographic 
    field names"
* multiple consecutive blockquotes seperated by attributions may not be allowed 
    (not sure; text could be interpreted either way)
* a warning about auto-symbol footnotes is missing (maybe it's not relevant?)
* colons are allowed within hyperlink reference names
* inline markup can be nested
* some directives are missing (epigraph, highlights, pull quote, date) and 
    some have been added (MathML, code execution (disabled by default), enscript)
* container directive now uses "class" instead of "classes"
* csv directive doesn't require csv.py
* references directive doesn't allow options

There may be a few others; my eyes glazed over. --Ethan