Which markup language can be used in Docstrings to format the documentation-hover pop-up?

[Sorontik]

I am very confused.
I've spent several hours by now, trying to find out how i can format my docstrings properly, but i couldn't find a concise answer anywhere.

I found a few posts that suggest that either markdown or reST is supported or was at some point used.
I also found indications that sometimes one is converted to the other,

As you can see in the attached screenshot, many markdown features like headings, lists and horizontal lines are working,
but inline formattings like *italic* or **bold** do not work.
These should both be valid markdown and valid reST - so i expected them to work either way, but apparently they don't.

Markdown style ~~strikethrough~~ and appending two spaces at the end of a line for a line break also don't work.

I suspect this might be due to issues like #627 , #692 or #716, where users complained that certain character sequences were interpreted as formatting when they weren't intended to be.

I also tried to enable the experimental support for reST in the settings - which wreaked havoc - the layouts were all destroyed, seemingly random colors and other formattings were inserted and the behaviour became erratic, like inserting or removing one element completely changed how other were rendered...

So how can I format my docstrings in a way that is both readable in source code and diplayed nicely in the VSC Editor Hover popup?