My tupp'th:
Formatted text, whether PDF, HTML or (heaven forbid!) Word Documents,
is easier to read than unformatted plain text, and those of us without
the OP's very admirable proficiency in vi remain at the mercy of the
various readers and their associated search functions.
However, I sure that it's not too arduous a task to extract the text
in these documents and strip them of their formatting?
Or am I missing something?