Why care about Unix tools when you use Emacs?

My notes form part of my longer-term storage. I do not want to have to rely on a special program to be able to read them or filter them. Unix is universal, at least as far as I am concerned.

Denote streamlines some tasks and makes things easier in general, which is consistent with how Emacs provides a layer of interactivity on top of Unix. Still, Denote’s utilities can, in principle, be implemented as POSIX shell scripts (minus the Emacs-specific parts like fontification in Dired or the buttonization of links).

Portability matters. For example, in the future I might own a smartphone, so I prefer not to require Emacs, Org, or some other executable to access my files on the go.

Furthermore, I might want to share those files with someone. If I make Emacs a requirement, I am limiting my circle to a handful of relatively advanced users.

Please don’t misinterpret this: I am using Emacs full-time for my computing and maintain a growing list of packages for it. This is just me thinking long-term.