The various merits of each of these formats will be discussed and compared in this paper. Since the production of E-texts is almost always achieved with volunteer effort, the format has to be easy to work in, as well as easy for the end user. The tools themselves have to be easy to use. There is no control over typeface, beyond a usual assumption that the reader will be viewing in a monospaced font. There is an abundance of available tools for the creation of plain text, since any software which lets you create a file of words will do, from basic text editors to powerful word processing software.
Few tools are available to assist in formatting or layout.
For example, it is actually quite difficult to change the line length of an existing E-text, say to reduce it from 75 characters to 60 characters. Creators with programming experience can work magic using programming tools such as Perl, but options for the non-programmer can be limited. For the end user, aside from adjustment of typeface and font size, there is little control over presentation. As with the creator, unless the user has programming skills, she is more or less locked into the layout provided. As such, it provides a viable medium for the creation and dissemination of E-texts.