I'm looking for a general purpose writing tool, for writing letters, documentation, jot down notes and so on in pure text, and not be dependent on a certain piece of software like Word for the writing part but it could be as simple as Notepad or as advanced as Vim.<p>At some point I might need these writings to be presentable to others in form of a PDF, with formatting: like headers, bold, italic, having a page header, a footer and so on.<p>Any pointers to where I might look to?
Like others, I use whatever text editor I find most convenient and write it in Markdown-like syntax (on Windows, that's MarkdownPad). When I want to get it into PDF, I'll either use Leanpub to make it into an eBook, or I'll convert it into LaTex and use something like <a href="http://overleaf.com" rel="nofollow">http://overleaf.com</a> (wysiwyg preview of your LaTex) to improve the formatting (or do things that Markdown-like syntax doesn't handle).
Abiword is a lightweight word processor. You'd probably want to use Abiword's template feature to set defaults to what you want. EG I prefer light text on dark backgrounds. I like monospaced fonts. I have all the toolbars turned off.<p>This allows me to do basic "text editor like" typing, but with the option to apply styling and export to PDF.<p><a href="http://www.abisource.com/wiki/FaqDefaultFont" rel="nofollow">http://www.abisource.com/wiki/FaqDefaultFont</a><p><a href="http://www.abisource.com/wiki/FAQ/Always_save_as_Word" rel="nofollow">http://www.abisource.com/wiki/FAQ/Always_save_as_Word</a><p>Otherwise, any text editor you like for most of the stuff and the tools you need for the other stuff. gedit for all the texty stuff, and then import it into a WP to apply styles and export to PDF.<p>I guess I misunderstand your question: why don't you just use a word-processor for everything, and save as text? Why don't you just use a text editor and then import into a WP when needed?
I use several things:<p>leanpub: for writing books. uses Dropbox, web services to produce books from markdown. I can edit markdon files on my phone, ipad, Chromebook, and kaptops.<p>Google docs: quick notes that I might need in the future; having search helps find stuff later<p>Microsoft OneNote - for notebooks for travel planning, research, etc.<p>Emacs: org mode, but it takes effort to get started