[freddie_mercury]

I think you've over corrected too far in the other direction.

"Write plain text" is definitely not a shorthand for "use open formats".

PDF is an open format.

Approximately nobody who says "write plain text" thinks putting everything in PDF is an acceptable alternative.

They don't even want you writing in HTML, for that matter. They want Markdown.

They really do mean something fairly close to "plain text".

[thomascgalvin]

To quote myself:

> The real argument is "use the simplest, most open format possible."

For most collections of words, that means Markdown, not PDF. But if the words you're saving are a mortgage document or power of attorney, PDF is actually a better choice.

[selfhoster11]

I'm never going to write directly in PDF, but if I want to preserve something? 100% I will save it as a PDF if it's document-like.