We made a german Docu for editors:
ezpublish_in_8_schritten_v1ezpsxw.zip OpenOffice version
ezpublish_in_8_schritten_v1ezp.zip PDF Version ~74 Pages, 5MB, ~110 Screenshot
For the forums here on ez.no we use attributes of the type text field, without formatting. To format some simple tags like you describe we use the operators as shown below.
If you want to format text you can also use the XML text datatype, which is also much more powerful. And if you are inputting content like documentation and articles you should use this datatype. --bård