well, it's text-editor based and scores of people worked with similar systems successfully without being a nerd before Microsoft and IBM started to push for WYS

well, it's text-editor based and scores of people worked with similar systems successfully without being a nerd before Microsoft and IBM started to push for WYSIWIG because you could sell a new UI for that every year or two (and now the same people are selling SaaS because people stopped taking the bait...). Efficiency gains for actual users: noone knows, but people are making a lot of money, so it has to be something.