Plain text would've been THE usual way to go for most things (1), but it's so hidden in major OSs, even in Linux distros. Many use Word or Wordpad mostly as a

Plain text would've been THE usual way to go for most things (1), but it's so hidden in major OSs, even in Linux distros. Many use Word or Wordpad mostly as a plain text editor becausr they don't know the difference between plain text and a word document. Also, there is thpage metaphor in those programswhich people like, because we think of text in pages. This is not that hard to emulate in plain text but not that straightforward too. People often share documents so pages and paragraphs must be equal for all (paragraph numbering might be a solution). We have the tooling fir generating convenient formats for consumption likr PS and PDF, but default tooling for plain text and the visibility thereof is what's needed. (1) When youcompose text you want to compose first style later. Wysiwyg mixes the two and you end up with crappy spelling and half arsed formatting most thetime.