As a concrete example of what you're talking about, all of these plain-text accounting solutions are difficult/impossible to sort the transactions in because th

As a concrete example of what you're talking about, all of these plain-text accounting solutions are difficult/impossible to sort the transactions in because their plain-text-ness gives so much freedom. Then, because transactions aren't sorted, it becomes easier to load up some kind of UI (CLI or GUI) to browse things by-date or by-account or whatever. To say nothing of charting & reporting... And at that point...the usefulness of plain-text-ness seems quite diminished. It becomes more like a data-entry format than anything else. That said, I continue to use a plain-text accounting system because the alternatives aren't really any better at this point and often come with their own issues.