Phil<p><span>Factors:<br>1. Accessibility. Not everyone has really fast (or stable) internet.<br>2. Environmental. There's no reason to use more computing power than necessary for the task at hand. It's wasteful. Very few people </span><i>need</i><span> the fancy features advanced text editors introduce. <br>3. Interoperability. Text files I write and send are readable *everywhere.* Try loading up Google Docs on a 1024x768 screen with a 256MB RAM Pentium 3. You'll be lucky if Google Docs even loads.<br>4. Privacy. A text file is easy to protect. GPG is the most straightforward. It remains small, and there's no way middle-men can read it. Google Docs? Google has root and they're not encrypted from them. So, good luck.<br>5. Account requirements. Text files require no accounts anywhere. All you need it an Internet connection and a DNS server that'll point your computer the right way. SaaS requires that you also have up-to-date software, a powerful computer, and that you register an account with them to access files shared with you.<br>6. Storage space. A text file takes kilobytes. A .docx file takes megabytes. My daily journal, which granted has some meta-data but </span><i>is</i> still plain text, is nearing on 580kb after <i>three years</i><span> of diligent, detailed journaling. I can't help but doubt that Word would even open a .docx file that large if formatted natively. (Thousands of headings, links, timestamps, etc.)<br>6. Feature-set. Plain text lets you do enough for 99% of all tasks. Yes, it's not as pretty, but within the bounds of putting characters into a file, you have complete freedom. Proprietary services, on the other hand, have a very very rich feature-set, most of which is irrelevant for 99% of users. The drawback of this is that every user is forced to load these rarely-used functions onto their own computer when the applications load up. That's wasteful, and likely cost the world hundreds of millions in unnecessary energy expenditure already.<br><br>TL;DR: Use plain text unless you absolutely positively can't help it. It's seriously better in every way.<br><br></span><a href="https://fed.bajsicki.com/tags/plaintext" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#plaintext</a> <a href="https://fed.bajsicki.com/tags/emacs" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#emacs</a> <a href="https://fed.bajsicki.com/tags/txt" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#txt</a> <a href="https://fed.bajsicki.com/tags/notepad" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#notepad</a> <a href="https://fed.bajsicki.com/tags/bloat" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#bloat</a> <a href="https://fed.bajsicki.com/tags/bloatware" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#bloatware</a> <a href="https://fed.bajsicki.com/tags/saas" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#saas</a> <a href="https://fed.bajsicki.com/tags/googledocs" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#googledocs</a> <a href="https://fed.bajsicki.com/tags/msword" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#msword</a> <a href="https://fed.bajsicki.com/tags/microsoftword" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#microsoftword</a> <a href="https://fed.bajsicki.com/tags/rant" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#rant</a><span><br><br>RE: </span><a href="https://fed.bajsicki.com/notes/a6uy06mot0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">https://fed.bajsicki.com/notes/a6uy06mot0</a></p>