Best word processor for Ubuntu?
Hey folks, looking for recommendations. What's your go to word processor on Ubuntu? (EDIT: For regular writing, not a text editor for coding.) I haven't been the biggest fan of Libre office tbh (please don't hate me...) There were just several bugs in Writer that made it unusable for me. I'm curious about alternatives. I read that WPS office is on ubuntu, but I've always found it to run kind of slow (however, my experience was on Windows.).
I don't need a lot of fancy utilities, but would enjoy something a little more beautiful than notepad++ :) My biggest concern is just that it's a stable software. I'm OK with glitches or UI bugs, just nothing that's going to crash and burn and corrupt my work. (I mention this because there are several newer word processors made by single developers, and I'm a little weary to use them because I don't genuinely know how stable the software is.) I'm also not a fan of software that saves in some special format where you rely on that software to open it (or have to go through hoops to convert it.)
Any recommends?
EDIT: I'm new to Ubuntu, in case it makes a difference.
If you're not down with Libreoffice Write, I think the next-most-full-featured word processor for linux would be AbiWord. I haven't used it in a while, but it's been around since 1998 so it ought to be pretty damn stable.
Otherwise, it's not ideal in every situation, but Google Docs?
Hey thanks, I was actually just playing with Abiword and I think it'll work perfectly. Not the biggest fan of Google docs as I am offline most of the time, and generally am not a fan of google.
I used to like the simplicity of AbiWord but found it wasn't always very good at compatibility. It would mess up formatting quite often for me. I haven't used it in years since I was in college though, is it any better now?
My favorite is LaTeX using TeXstudio. It's my favorite for anything that gedit can't do. The environment feels like an IDE. The documents are infinitely customizable and beautiful.
https://texstudio-org.github.io/getting_started.html
https://www.texstudio.org/
Otherwise, I would look into Google Workspace.
Surprised to see so many latex folks on here! Inspires me to give it another try.
Writing documents in LaTeX is like any other programming project: You put in a lot of time at the start to automate a problem away and at the end you have a latex template that fits and you use for everything.
Though honestly, unless you need it for maths and such, it's overkill. I just use it at this point because I'm familiar with it and got a template, and it's useful for works where you need to put in code, citations and such. Or because you want very exact control over layouting because you enjoy that kinda stuff.
I'm not convinced it's overkill outside of math - like you said, it gives you so much control over typesetting/laying out a document. It can be so difficult to position things quickly and efficiently with conventional word processors. In fact, the time wasted trying to do so could probably be spent learning LaTeX. Like css for a pdf or something :) That is what got me wanting to come back to it, tbh.
I don't think I ever got to the point of feeling comfortable with LaTeX, so I never got to achieve that template that worked for me, that I could just plug things into (and just stayed at the fumbling around with it stage).
This happens with LaTeX too though. Floats (the wrappers for things like pictures) are placed automatically, and sometimes in a completely different location than where you want them to. This happens so often to me that basically any time I insert anything I add the force position option to it so it actually appears where I put it in the source code.
LaTeX has a lot of really weird quirks, it's syntax is very often very stupid, etc, but like you say, it produces very nicely typeset documents. No other word processor that I know of support microtyping, for example, which is a simple one-line addition to your LaTeX source file and makes your text incredibly nice to look at. To explain it; unlike standard block text, which adjusts spacing width to have every line have the same width, microtyping extends this functionality by also adjusting lettering by tiny fractions, so each line becomes the exact same length. It's one of those, once you see it, you can't go back additions.
With some searching I found a package called
microtype, is that what you mean? What's the oneliner, just including the package?Yes! I'm currently at work so I'd have to recheck my tex template but off the top of my head just importing it was enough. You can generate a couple of paragraphs of blind text and you should immediately notice the difference.
Crap, that actually sounds reminiscent of the same frustrations I get with css, oddly (trying to force things into certain places and the frustrations that come with that.)
I think it takes some work on the front end for a really professional payoff. Worth it IMHO. Good luck!
I also use Tex for anything that requires a bit of formality, like my resume or any formal work documents. Of course its main purpose is to typeset math, and the majority of my work documents that aren't administrative are math papers/exams/notes/quizzes. But for plenty of non-math papers, I always feel proud publishing a tex doc, cause I know it's the sexiest in its cohort.
I feel that too! It always (reliably) looks so perfect and professional.
Honestly, I haven't needed anything other than LibreOffice for years. Sorry to hear you've hit a showstopping bug.
It's weird because the issue is intermittent, so sometimes it wouldn't be there. However, when it hits it's incredibly distracting, and it hits enough (usually about 30 minutes or so into writing) that I just had to stop using it. I really loved it so it was disappointing. I spent many hours trying to solve the problem because I enjoyed using it so much. I think I just got unlucky, and don't think it's a common issue. Hopefully it will be fixed one day, I just bet it's a low priority sort of thing which I understand.
As I recall, trackpad scrolling in LibreOffice is horrifically bad. The scroll rate is like 6 times greater than all other apps in your system. It's really bewildering to me why they haven't fixed that over all these years. (or why it got released in that state to begin with)
To be honest, when the scroll is functional, I never notice any issue with the scroll rate (at least it didn't bug me or anything.) I probably used Libre writer for a good year and never had any issues. then one day, you just couldn't navigate at all with the trackpad.
I did notice that this seemed to happen on documents that are very big (50+ pages). I'm not sure if that's a coincidence, or could have anything to do with it (and would also explain why I didn't notice it early on.) Unfortunately this makes the issue extra annoying because being able to scroll becomes so much more important then (vs. just a couple pages document where it's not a big deal to just use the scroll bar or something.)
Try Lyx. It’s sort of an easy-mode what-you-see-is-what-you-get TeX editor.
I’ve used it throughout university, and quite like it.
Now this looks like my cup of tea! Definitely trying this out on both Windows and ubuntu! My need for LaTeX is more around actually structuring the document to my liking (rather than mathematical symbols, etc.) so this looks perfect, thank you!
i would recommend taking a look at Only Office. It’s compatability can be better than LibreOffice with Microsoft Office files too!
There are some paid versions of LibreOffice (still GPLed) that have additional features/improved UIs, maybe look into them. I don't know the specifics, but there's more than just LibreOffice and AbiWord.
I really loved LibreOffice, I just ran into a strange bug about a year ago where it would no longer scroll using my touch pad. (Only libre writer has this problem, no other application.) Apparently this is a known bug going back for a while, seems I am just unlucky to have hit it? Have never figured out how to resolve it, sadly, so I just stopped using the software. (Not complaining, it's open source and it's not like anyone is getting paid to fix it, so I get it!) Would be hesitant to pay for it due to that.
It depends on the purpose.
For notes to self, vim and either text or markdown (can be converted with retext or pandoc for example)
For some WYSIWYG formatting I might use LibreOffice or ReText
For a proper document (customer report) I'd write Latex code in vim
For collaborating I'd use CodiMD, which has vim bindings and image pasting but the code is just plain old markdown so no lock-in there either
For something I'm writing that might turn into a book, I'm using html so far because one of the viewing modes is web and with some css media queries and page breaks, print to pdf should be fine. But again in vim
So idk what it is you're looking for. You mention no vendor lock-in, in which case I can only recommend plain text files (be it latex code or markdown: you won't be locked into one editor and converting the format is not hard). For stability, I've not had LibreOffice crash in a long time. Whenever my system runs out of battery or so, on next boot it asks to recover open files and that always worked flawlessly.
You say you had bugs in LibreOffice that made it unusable, but don't mention what special feature it was that is broken (for me everything works fine) so I don't know what your requirements are
I used to love latex, but it's been so long since I used it I feel like I need to re-learn everything. I remember getting frustrated by random compiler errors with miktex on my machine (probably stupid user error admittedly). It's been so long though, I bet there's so much more out there though.
Just curious - you said you use vim for your latex code, in what way do you compile it (specifically when you want to generate a pdf?) Do you just use some sort of command line utility? The problem I ran into back when I used it, was I thought I had to have some all in one editor/compiler, and I couldn't find any lightweight options that worked nicely (probably my lack of experience at fault). Just writing the code in vim and compiling it on a command line somewhere seems like it would simplify things a lot.
Fantastic, thanks! Tbh I've only ever used Latex on Windows; looking at this, it seems like it actually might be way easier to setup and use on linux. I'm definitely going to have to give this another try.
If you compile your document with latexmk, a single command that can recompile on every source file change and can also open a live-reloading pdf viewer, allowing for a quite tight feedback loop.
This sounds... awesome actually. And much more to my liking then doing everything in TeXnicCenter which is what I did when I first explored LaTeX. 17 year old you had some good ideas.
TeXnicCnter for LaTeX reminds me now of when I first started learning java, and had this massive eclipse setup. It was so burdensome for me, slow, and way more than I needed, and the whole thing ended up being off-putting to me. Later on, vim + command line to compile things turned out all I needed. (not that I'm trying to shit on texniccenter or eclipse, just a personal preference thing.)
If you feel you're up for that level of technical acumen, I'd recommend taking it one step further and embrace a combination of tmux and Neovim with some latex plugins. I think you'd find it very empowering and lightning fast once you had the hotkeys for those two tools ingrained in your muscle memory.
Hey I somehow missed this. Thanks, this sounds like an interesting idea, and I think I'd be up to it! I have heard of tmux, but not neovim before.
I've got a standard makefile which looks something like this, recreated here from memory on mobile so pardon any typos. I also install a few more packages, but I do this once per linux installation and have a default list in my bashrc (installdefaultbase() does things like vim, qalc, and python, installdefaultlaptop() does things like battery utilities, installdefaultfull() adds some bigger things like texlive, and I've got a few more installation aliases) so I don't know the package names by heart. Can look them up later if you like.
At work I've also got a default tex template, privately I have yet to make that but if you use this more often then I'd recommend it. At work I use latex daily for customer reports (security consultancy), so I keep in practice.
I use latexmk with a shell alias that looks something like this:
alias pdfmk='latexmk -lualatex -pvc'latexmk is great. (can replace thelualetexwithpdfto use pdflatex). This opens up a pdf viewer and automatically recompiles the document every time it reloads.you do have to configure latexmk to tell it which pdf viewer to launch, but the
.latexmkrcis literally 3 lines (replace with your pdf viewers of choice)This is awesome. Would definitely be interested to know your package list, but 0 pressure, and don't want to cause you any work or annoyance. I'm sure I can tinker away at things and figure out what works.
Side note - I think it's a special sort of person that recreates makefiles on mobile from memory haha. you have my respect! (or do all people start being able to do this after long enough on linux?)
apt install texlive texlive-fonts-extra texlive-fonts-recommended texlive-latex-extra texlive-extra-utils pdfgrep latexmk poppler-utils, the latter mainly being forpdftotext, andpdfgrepI guess is also not really needed. ThelatexmkI don't use anymore myself but many people like it.At work we also have a german language pack installed for certain customers, as well as python interfacing things
While I'm looking at my default install lists, some other packages that I think are underrated:
progress(progress monitor for many tools like cp, dd, mv, sha256sum, etc.)pv(pipe speed/eta viewer)strace(see system calls, such as which config file the program is reading from)inkscape(vector images are love)Thanks :). I have a weakness for simple technologies that can easily be put to good use. On the other extreme, I find it very hard to wrap my head around complicated things with a lot of moving components. I feel like I don't understand them and find it hard to get simple things done with them effectively. Stuff like kubernetes or modern web frameworks stacks layers of virtual complicatedness and I find it hard to work with that.
Makefiles are super simple when you take ten minutes to read an introduction. People just make them insanely complicated with whole configuration systems and automake and god knows what else. These things always give me trouble and it's like trying to read machine code at that point (if those, admittedly common, makefiles are all you ever saw, then I don't blame you for thinking it takes a special type of person!). In their basis, they're hand-writable and a simple dependency manager / file change checker.
Same for 'obscure' languages like AWK. I know exactly one person throughout my career (besides myself) that used awk for more than selecting a column with
{print $3}, and that's despite every colleague I ever had working on Linux. The language is dead simple but people prefer to copy prefab commands rather than taking ten minutes to learn what they're doing. (In two sentences:/test/{command; command; command}matches all lines that contain the regextestand then runs the commands you put there. You can use$1and such for referencing columns on the line. With that understanding and a few minutes of practice using it, one knows the language pretty well.)jqis seeing more love because JSON is currently hot (though jq is more complicated than either Make or AWK), but still, almost nobody actually uses it. My blog post jq for dummies shows some use cases, in case someone here happens to be interested in a language specific for json data querying and manipulation.It really depends where one's interests lie. If they're a developer (such that they come across makefiles at all) and have an interest in understanding the tools they use, then sure it's just a matter of time before they've seen all the common ones. If, instead, they see these tools as arcane leftovers and abstract it away with another layer of tools on top of the actual makefile, then no, they'd probably never learn it.
Damn thank you. I have been actually going back and playing with both LaTeX and pandoc since this thread, and having some fun with it.
I didn't even think about stuff like that. I need to write a lot in a non-Latin based language, and I wonder now if LaTeX will give me some difficulties. I'll have to look into this.
I think you're so, so right about just sitting down and taking the time to learn the basics (and also, to understand what a tool is geared for, and what is out of its scope.) I have always been bad about that, and have a tendency to just want to jump into things (or try to solve a specific problem with said tool, rather than taking the time to understand and appreciate the tool itself before doing so). It's only the last few years I've realized how much I've held myself back by not just having patience, and learning the bare basics before moving on. (that little investment at the start will pay off in droves later on). If you do this naturally, that is a massive asset you have, because I think for many of us it's something we learn way too late.
I actually feel this exact same way about using simple technologies, or rather simplest thing to solve the problem. I hate over complicating things. I think one of the things that's held me back, was that when I would look up how to solve problems, many/most answers I would find online point to the more complex frameworks (even when that level of complexity is way overkill), I guess because they are more modern or popular. The other problem i'd encountered, with some stuff like bash for example, I felt there were so many ways to accomplish the same thing that it was difficult to find consistent answers so I never ended up digesting thing properly. Again though, that's all probably a side effect of my lack of patience in understanding the basics; if I did, I'd probably know the answer already, or at least know how to frame the questions better to find results more inline with what I'm looking for.
One really, really nice thing, about stuff like make, and similar older and simple tech, is that there's no shortage of very direct, simple, and to-the-point tutorials that have stood the test of time. It's really a gift that the internet provides such knowledge, and I really should utilize this stuff more.
I don't know that much about it, but two things that I know this does is:
on't get lines broken like this
\printdate{2023-06-29}to the29.06.2023notation that Germans love (and use in international contexts without thinking if that would even make sense to anyone else, I've noticed; at least I don't remember seeing dates with dot separation as close by as in the Netherlands, I only see this notation (and some other things like translated timezone initialisms, as if that helps those far away from you know what time you mean..!) after moving to Germany).Wouldn't be too harsh on yourself with that one. Bash is confusing and people online have opinions, and they aren't always right or, at least, not always nuanced, leading to five answers with seven different options with you as the judge.
It takes some time, either deliberately diving into Bash and related topics like filesystem layouts, or just experience in trying out different options and starting to see patterns. No fault in not having gotten around to taking deliberate time for this one, also because most people don't. If you keep using it, you'll be referred to as a unix wizard before you even feel like you know that much ;)
As an aside, often you don't have to formulate a search query at all. Another low tech (old) solution to find information:
/usr/share/doc/python3/html/search.htmland type the module whose docs I want. This will always match my exact Python version; will never be down; works offline; and does not require a search engine to scan an index of literally the entire internet and rank the matches, ergo lower environmental footprint. This is installed by default but I doubt more than 1% of Python developers, let alone users, know this has been on their disk the entire time!man bash. All you need to know is that it's a part of the Bash language (the commandtype [says "[ is a shell builtin") and you know its docs are going to be in there. I used this to find whether=is a valid substitute for==for this commit yesterday. To be fair,[was one of the worst things to try to find, with square brackets also being used for optional arguments, so I may have been better off searching the internet in this case :Pman grep->/ -hto search for the-hoption and avoid matching--help)Sorry that I never got a chance to respond to this, I wasn't on tildes for a bit. Thanks for the guidance here. I have been playing around with LaTeX a lot more, especially in the context of pandoc. As expected, I did start to run into issues around non-latin based characters (that is always a struggle tbh with any sort of programming, at least in my experience). Mostly that some of the pdf engines don't appear to support them (at least when I was using pandoc to generate things), but I was able to find work around by using pdflatex as the pdf engine, it seems to play nicer. yes, changing print date to that format is something I want to be able to do. I didn't even know I could change that formatting!
I don't know why I am yet to wrap my mind around using man pages (or say python documentation) as the first, rather than last (or even never..) resort. It's like my mind is just stuck on "google it" for every technical problem, when you're right, man pages are sufficient to answer probably tons (if not most..) of my questions. Even with python documentation, I end up looking it up online, instead of what I have right there locally on my machine <faceplam here..>. I've noticed that some people just have that way of thinking, they just go to man pages and local docs first. I envy you folks, as again, you seem to be the types that can write makefiles from memory on a tildes comment, like you did earlier. I really need to put some effort to shift my thinking, to be open to different ways of searching for answers.
To maybe go against the grain, if you desperately need a really good word editor on Lennox, you could always go with office 365 and use their online tools.
Not open source, but hey, it will work.
When you put it like that, suddenly you have a lot of options. VS Code + Markdown would more than suffice in that case. Also Sublime Text or even Obsidian. There are lots of options in that area. Including Emacs, but I get the impression that you're not looking for something like that.
LibreOffice is perfectly usable. If you're used to Microsoft, give it a shot.
You can also use Microsoft Word online. Or Google Drive.
Yeah emacs would take some getting used to again. I would love a good markdown editor, though. I did love LibreOffice initially, but unfortunately hit a bug on my laptop where the trackpad isn't recognized when libre writer is open, which has made it pretty much impossible for me to use. That's my only issue with it (no complaints about the UI or utilites it has. In fact I love the configuration options.) I'm mostly not connected to the internet which limits options like MS word online or google drive, unfortunately.
What a crazy bug! Maybe worth sorting out? Maybe try installing LibreOffice from another source such as Flatpak?
Tbh, the bug was on my Windows install, but it caused me so much headache that I sort of got scared off of using it. I actually have it installed on Ubuntu and was using it earlier. I just live in constant fear of being distracted if it comes up again haha. I think it's likely what this guy has as well.
There's no software without it's bugs though, and I don't want to paint Libre office unfairly. I remember a bug I used to hit on MS word. Sometimes if I keyed up too quickly, the entire document would quickly scroll to the top and then suddenly crash. This was probably 5-8 years ago, and I'm not even sure that version of word had backup copies enabled, so I'd just lose the unsaved work. I swore off MS word after that for many years, because I was so salty about it haha
Oh I forgot you were using Windows, so the Flatpak bit makes no sense :P
I believe OpenOffice is still usable and probably the same as LibreOffice in most cases. LibreOffice is a fork of OpenOffice.
That's right, I had forgotten about OpenOffice. I recently tried it on Windows and really liked it. I will give it a try on Ubuntu. Hopefully it doesn't contain the same weird bug (though I have feeling it's unlikely I'd hit it twice anyway.)
Call me opinionated but I think markdown has today rendered useless the old and "proper" word processor paradigm, the likes of MS Word and LibreOffice Writer. Learning markdown isn't such a great IT skill, it's expected out of most power users these days, it's even simpler I'd argue compared to handling the GUI eccentricities in MS Word!
You can use any minimalist editor on most platforms to achieve speed and efficiency while writing your markdown. My personal choice is Notepad++ on Windows platform and the Geany editor on Linux distros. I might have perhaps learned Vim and Emacs too if I was born a few years earlier because by the time I took interest in Linux, other minimalist editors like
nanoand geany had already appeared or gained traction. I never saw the appeal of using Emacs as an operating system or programmable tool, I usually prefer python/perl scripting for such specific routines or tasks.I couldn’t possibly disagree more. Markdown is possibly the least flexible markup language out there, it’s extremely simple by design. There may be some implementations that offer advanced features but generally speaking you are unable to control segments containing different styles, adjust layouts, or really control any element of visual style from within the document itself. Even here on tildes Markdown doesn’t cut the mustard, since we have two HTML tags that are whitelisted for use because there is no Markdown equivalent. And beyond that, it’s not even a document format; it has to be compiled to a finished document.
The implementations that offer advanced features are what makes Markdown flexible: it's a loose specification. I find GitHub Flavored Markdown to be fantastic and pretty much the only way I take notes today.
Need to write code examples? Code blocks for loads of different languages are fully highlighted. Need to write some inline math? Github will render LaTeX between
$$. Need to do some minor typesetting? Drop into inline HTML. Need to do some major typesetting? It's simple to convert your Markdown file into an equivalent HTML file, via pandoc or even manually.I do agree that Markdown isn't a document format though and those inline HTML examples are pushing it - but it not being a document format is perhaps its biggest advantage! You don't need to compile it. Sure, you can, and probably will for anything fancy, but it's also pleasant enough to read on its own in plain text.
There’s a theme to what you said, and that is HTML. The thing that markdown is almost always transformed into - even as an intermediary - is HTML. And like you said, the most common way to extend the capabilities of Markdown is indeed HTML.
And if there is a document format that could “replace” office, that would be HTML. You can code it or use a WYSIWYG editor, and although it isn’t great with pagination it arguably is a document format at this point, with even more powerful style and layout features than any office suite or desktop publishing program.
But the styling and flexibility markdown offers you built-in (such as bold, italics,
code block,strikethrough) is a testament to both its simplicity and genius!Now, I can understand the specific needs for proper word formats like
docxandodt, especially in corporate and workplace scenarios but the idea is that we should encourage more and more simple solutions to problems, not complex ones. The world and the web is generally going in that direction, that's why we went from SOAP/XMLRPC to REST, Java EE to Rails/Python, CORBA/Applets and other complications to simple W3C standards.The web is already too much cluttered and massive decluttering is needed to make it more usable, utilitarian and elegant. A lot of styling is provided in markdown as I said, more tags and features can be introduced as needed, it's better to improvise the markdown than revert back to the cluttered solutions. As for layouts, they are mostly needed for printing in corporate spaces than anything else, that could be avoided too by switching to email and other greener ways of communication.
The things that markdown are missing are important, though! You simply can’t design a corporate letterhead completely in markdown without using features like inline HTML. Markdown can’t even control basic things like typefaces and font sizes!
More than anything Markdown isn’t even a real standard. It’s a giant collection of simelar markups with a common base set that all decide to extend in ways as they see fit, with no guarantee that anyone’s extensions will work the same way in any other implementation.
Markdown is only useful when you are going to control the final output in some way or if you simply don’t care to control its stylistic output.
I have always disliked the oldschool word processor formatting, like what you might find in MS word. Each software has it's own way, and sometimes it's confusing why things are working the way they are. (Also it's all GUI based). Totally prefer markdown for this reason, though to be fair I haven't played with it much. I'd love to get better with it.
I didn't even realize you could write markdown in Notepad++. Looking it up though, seems there are plugins for it. How cool! I had tried to find a good markdown editor in Windows and hadn't enjoyed what I found, so I will have to try this.
Manjaro have switched their default to OnlyOffice which is a pretty good suite.
Give it a whirl.
Several recommends of OnlyOffice, I will have to try this out. Anything in particular you have enjoyed most about it? Would love to know. Looks like this might be mostly geared towards having internet connection, if I am understanding it correctly. Have you had much success using it offline?
It'll work offline using desktop apps.
The user interface is clean. If you're doing the basics you cannot go wrong. It has half decent compatibility for all office file types.
No one is ever going to beat MS for an Office suite, but they pour so much R&D money in to it no one can really compete. However, it's still web only for us lowly Linux users and although web PWAs are getting better, they're still nothing compared to full blown apps.
Thank you for the details. Tbh, I am not a big fan of of PWAs (just personal preference, nothing against them), and prefer something I am actually installing locally on my system anyway. I just enjoy working offline most of the time. Then encrypted backups to the cloud later :)
I was just recently thinking about how much money they must put into MS office. I only just recently revisited it after years of not having seen it, and it is seriously fast and sleek. I won't lie, I was impressed. I was thinking they must dump so much resources into it. That said, many good free and open source alternatives, which I'm grateful for.
Not anything that hasn’t already been said. Learning Tex could be good. If I had to write any it would be in something like sublime and compiled in a terminal a workspace over. If you want to go to the dark side learn Troff. It’s Tex’s older cousin.
A text editor + the markup language that best suits your needs and complexity level.
Vim, emacs, or similar, LaTeX, Markdown, possibly another lightweight markup language.
The advantages are that these all put the writing first, which means focusing on what you want to say and how you say it, the formatting is supplied by stylesheets.
Tools such as Lyx are one possible way into this (Lyx is used for generating LaTeX documents, but attempts to streamline some of the process.
For myself, I tend to write virtually everything in Markdown and generate various formats from that using pandoc, which is absolutely amazeballs. It's a document conversion engine which can read in and write out in dozens of document formats. If you do enough of that you can have a Makefile-driven process to publish, say, HTML, PDF, ePub, and plain ASCII text all from the same source. Added bonus is managing your writing projects under git.
And yes, I've used word processing software. Over the past 35 years or so, Wordperfect, Wordstar, MacWrite, MS Write, MS Word, Ami Pro, ApplixWrite (from ApplixWare), and NeoOffice since it was called StarOffice. Plain text really just suits my style, needs, and preference for durability far, far better.
Holy crap wordperfect, I haven't seen it since childhood, damn! Had completely forgotten about it!
EDIT: Playing with pandoc, it's great!
Maybe remarkable would fit the bill.
There's also bibisco if you're writing a novel or short story.