The real problems start in an academic natural science environment. Your documents are full of
mathematical equations.
# txt isn't usefull in any form [Please have a look at usenet then you will see how compicated it is to make clear for the reader how the equation looks like.
]
# In html you can embed equations only as images [mostly gif] or with additional plugins.
# so pdf is the best format for these documents. [LaTeX->pdf]
Edit: Can somebody verify that iLiad doesn't open html files which are large in size [let me say 3 MB or so]?