Don't understand the downvotes here. This is exactly what I do — we just submitted at 20,000 word academic grant application with 15 collaborators at 6 sites. There is no way we could have done this in (sanely) in Word. We used our own etherpad instance to edit Markdown, then pandoc to convert to latex. Worked like a dream, and no old profs able to screw up the formatting.
Yes, the down votes on my previous thread confuses me. I am definitely not the larges MS Word lover in the bunch; however, there is no way that the wonderfully intelligent community that is HN is depending on it to format text that is being sent to an otherwise diverse group of people and platforms. One word simply comes to mind, "bizarre."
It’s certainly great if you don’t have to use Word. Many people have to, though, because they depend on other people who can only or will only use Word.
Writing in that context ‘but you don’t really have to use Word’ without actually answering the relevant question is wildly off topic and irrelevant and only true for a, I would guess, rather small subset of people.
Nothing is going to fall apart if you write everything in full .txt files. Word, iWork, Google Docs, and generally everything will open the file and it isn't formated with the likes of Word.
If you feel truly and honestly feel that you need to use a piece of software to appease a group of people, you have some deep seated issues with creativity. Of course I use the word you in reference to people who feel this way and not to anyone in the thread directly.
I use Word from time to time (but not if I don’t have to) because I don’t want to be a total douchebag. Life involves compromises. Working together with other people involves compromises. I can’t always convince everyone that we really should be using something different.
Oh, and while I am more than willing to agree with you that Word sucks I have no qualms using and liking other software which ultimately doesn’t give me text files. I absolutely adore InDesign and see no reason why I shouldn’t.
