Can Drupal do this?

Hi all,

I'm thinking of converting a RoR-project-in-progress to Drupal but I need to know if Drupal can do what I need. I don't mind if I will need to develop some custom modules, but its been 10 years since I last programmed in PHP so the less I need to custom develop, the better. I have checked Drupal's features and most of my requirements are met, but I'm not clear on one or two things.

Specifically, I want registered users to be able to publish their own articles, but with pre-defined sections and meta-information in a format that they are required to adhere to. In short, I need to build a custom form for the input. The input will be done in textile format, not WYSIWYG or (full/restricted) HTML, and I will need to modify the submitted textile-fields before they are stored in the database (or rendered to HTML). Obviously, given the custom article format I will need to be able to control the way the articles are displayed as well. The articles should be version-controlled, and any registered user may edit any other user's article (so there will be no article-ownership). Articles can be assigned to multiple categories. Articles will be publicly accessible, if possible using dynamic friendly-url's based on the article's title. Visitors should be able to submit comments to every article, which will be displayed along side the article itself.

Each user should have a public profile-page, with custom profile information collected during the sign-up procedure and editable only by the user himself. The profile-page will include a list of all the articles that the user has contributed to.

I also need articles to be downloadable in PDF-format, but if necessary I can implement this as a separate webservice outside of Drupal.

Is Drupal a viable solution to implement this or should I continue developing in this project in RoR? Also, if Drupal is suitable for this, can you recommend a good book about Drupal for experienced developers lacking Drupal-specific knowledge?

Thanks!
Dante