The dream program for me would be a standard word processor, but one that REQUIRES the use of styles for all text. No free-form. No manually applying and formatting, ever. Add a mode for easier drafting/rearranging/outlining and good full-screen, and I’d be very happy.

Same here! I find Scrivener with MultiMarkdown is pretty close to this idea. Next in line would be LyX, which is a fully semantic word processor. LyX isn’t as good for creative writing though, in my opinion. It lacks the outline organisational features, full screen, and Edit Scrivenings mode.

The nice thing about MultiMarkdown is that it is very easy to modify with a little learning. You can use or create a converter which will take the semantic markings and turn them into other word processor formats, as long as those word processors are using open formats, naturally. MMD is just a simple way to make XML out of something very human readable. Going from standard XML (in the form of XHTML) to other formats is often very easy. By default though, it produces very beautiful PDFs, using pdflatex.

The potential of a semantic XML format, coupled with Scrivener’s creative tools are a potent combination. Not for everyone of course, but I do think it is the way of the future. I hope anyway. I’m tired of proprietary formats and data going obsolete in a decade.