[jdvh]

Tables can be arbitrarily complex, just like html, so yes a line has to be drawn somewhere. Spreadsheets and slide presentations can be copy-pasted as file attachments. That's fine.

You can't have a table look the same in every app, nor is that desirable (you'd have to embed fonts and re-create postscript). What you can have is the ability to copy-paste a table (or a bulleted list) back and forth between apps without mangling the state in the process. Rich Text intertwines semantics and style and it's not a good solution.

Most of the time you don't need the layout precision of postscript. There is a huge difference between not having any kind of tables or semantic context for text and having some that cover the 95% of daily use.