You mean on Linux you have no WYSIWYG directly manipulable text edit format other than plain text???What about these? http://www.nllgg.nl/Ted/ http://www.abisource.comThe only thing I don't like about rtf is that it is not diff-able. small changes can have global effect on the style tags.
what about latex? It is the standard format for scientific text production and there is plenty of tools for it, also WYSIWYGs. -- .