I just saw this on my omgubuntu feed:

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2016/09/typora-stylish-minimal-markdown-editor-now-available-ubuntu

It' about this new editor called typora that has windows and linux versions and is (at least for the moment) free (as in price). I tried it out on my Windows machine (downloaded from its site typora.io, where it also shows off many of its functions) and it looks pretty good!
It's been a while since you started this thread, but I do think it reminds me of Texts a lot. I attempted to make a simple table and copied/exported it as markdown (which is offered as an option) and it looked fine.

Thanks!! Well, it looks like a Ghostwriter, but with table support. GW currently has none, but I see big chance for it to come.

So, I have settled down with using ZimWiki, since the mark up format it uses:
- actually works, formatting does not break
- resulting notes can be edited/accessed without ZimWiki, plain text. So Zim itself is replaceable.
- very similar to markdown, and unlike markdown - sufficiently good documented without vague terms
- zim can export to markdown, html etc.
- is multiplatform
- supports most of formatting one needs
- no excessive formatting, which was main issue using ODT. ODT simply allows everything.
- search function succeeds to 100%, because the text is stored as-is in full sentencies - markup does not interfere. With ODT there was chance of tag interference in some cases, thus mass-search script would fail to find the text.

I have fixed the problem with the tables, the inability to undo, by setting huge auto-save time in Zim configs.
Now, if the table jeopardizes for some reason, I can reload without saving instead.

And if Zim dies, I can write my own tool to parse it and resort for plain-text editor meanwhile.