So, this is basically a thoughtful list of text manipulation programs for the Mac. And a great list at that.

I was astonished and slightly embarrassed to find out that my personal answer to all his use cases are Emacs.

Still, I fully concur with his sentiment: Text encoding issues aside, the only data format with sufficient longevity and compatibility for long time storage is plain text. It is what drives technology. It is source code. It is markup. It is the universal format for communicating with computers and humans.

That said, a smattering of HTML or LaTeX can go a long way to make plain text more printer/reading friendly.