Honestly, I'd almost prefer to *write* in LaTeX, because I can do much more than I ever could in .doc. If only I could just send you .tex files.
I write most of my stuff in a text editor very similar to what this forum's post system has. It supports pretty much anything that HTML allows, and it does so visually (it doesn't use bbcode). If I really wanted to, I could even throw in LaTeX if I had a formula that I just *had* to get in (you know, for all those crazy magic integrals). I used to work with LaTeX formatting college-level science textbooks, so I don't
It's also stored on my server, which has a very good chance of surviving anything short of the entire state of Utah exploding (between the live copy in Salt Lake and the backups in Logan). On top of that, it supports revision control, so I can even go back and look at previous versions if I want to.
If I could manage to find the time to finish it, I think it would be a very great method to resolve this entire problem, by creating a common interface for people to use. Hell, I could even support Ulysses' input methods alongside the default one. Multiple interfaces is just a matter of conversion. The backend stores it as valid XHTML to make it easier to display, but two-way conversion is easy (since it's valid). As it is, you can copy and paste directly from word, oo.org, and wordpad already, and it preserves all the formatting it can (which is pretty much everything). OO.org is actually semantic in nature, if you actually use the styles instead of just increasing font sizes for headers. In your article, you specifically say that HTML wouldn't be good for writing stories. I'd beg to differ, but then again, I can write it in my sleep. Converting from HTML to PDF and RTF is easy. Word's .doc format is a little more difficult because Microsoft likes it that way, but you could use the new XML-based word files pretty easily (since it's practically HTML to start). Openoffice has a command line utility to change files to .odt, or there are classes written in PHP to do the job as well. LaTeX... well, anything can be represented in that, if you have the ambition.
I feel the same way you do, though. I develop web sites for a living, so I'm *very* familiar with semantical systems. Every page I write is valid XHTML. Any and all display is controlled by CSS. I can't stand people who just throw everything into tables and put font tags all over the place.
It does seem like this thread has gone on a bit of a tangent. Guess it's back to work for me.