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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/1820
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I've used [TextRoom](http://code.google.com/p/textroom/) and [Bean](http://www.bean-osx.com/Bean.html) (plain text mode in both) - I just typed stuff in Markdown markup, converted it to HTML, and did all of the further editing in OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice.

My own theory is that when I'm writing, it's not really the distractions that count - it's the access to the features. If you write stuff in full-featured word processors, you can spend all day tweaking useless little details in formatting. In these programs, you have zero control over formatting, as it should be. When I type text, all I really care is support for UTF-8 and typography (pandoc, the tool that I use for Markdown conversions, does the smart quotes and en dashes for me, and the LanguageTool in LibreOffice does the rest of the fixups), support for text files with long lines, and a way to enter emphasis (just do _this_ in Markdown).

And as far as user interface goes, all I really need is that the text is readable. WYSIWYG programs force you to look at the text in the "final" form, which is probably not the same as the final final form _anyway_. TextRoom and Bean, on the other hand, just let me edit the text with blue background and white text. No need to dig up WordPerfect 5.1 and run it in DOSBox. =)

I'm in big favour of the Unix toolbox approach: there's no single tool that does all aspects well, but if you have a bunch of individual tools that do one aspect well, you get things done one way or other.

Original score: 3