I wrote my first book in what was then Star Office, but everything since has been in Emacs and some sort of markup. I agree with the annoying variations Markdow

I wrote my first book in what was then Star Office, but everything since has been in Emacs and some sort of markup. I agree with the annoying variations Markdown. reStructuredText is, at least, predictable. I do still outline in org mode though. It seems like anytime I interact with a traditional publisher, just like the editor in the article, they want MS Word. They then want to give me edits as Word change tracking. My compromise is to go back and change my source and regenerate. It works, but at night, when the world is quiet and dreams are less threatened by reason, I imagine a world where editors send me patches or pull requests. I'll have to try the method described in the article. That might be much better, but I'll have less chance of negotiating it than with a freelance editor. I don't think there's a technical solution to this problem and certainly not a profitable one, because it's a matter of getting people who couldn't care less about diffs and source control to use unfamiliar tools for the benefit of someone they are paying. I can't even get some developers to use source control. Maybe GitBook will change minds.