I've been looking for a tech stack to replace latex for decades now. As a very recent development, the combination of pandoc+weasyprint (plus a little bit of homebrewed pandoc filter magic) has now become good enough for my needs, and I have finally been able to take the plunge. Feels great.

For those who are a little less adventurous and who happen to be in the social sciences, humanities, journalism, etc., pandoc+msword is also definitely worth looking into. It's a much better tech stack than standalone msword. -- It's really only in the STEM fields that, in my mind, there really is no way around latex.