New Conclusions

I've been collecting feedback on Phrasis over the past two weeks now. However, the holidays slowed my progress quite a bit. Today, the suggestions started to swirl around and then coalesce into something much more coherent.

My recent conclusions:

• Writers don't want grammar checking. They want style checking and this may or may not include grammar checking.
• Writers say they want work flow management. But they don't. When they do get it, most ignore or misuse it. I consider this analogous to a programmer and writing documentation. Yet, like code documentation, managing workflow is something good writers do. (But they call refer to it by different names and do it in different manners) So, how do you provide useful workflow to a writer?
• There is a demand for limited dictionaries. Rather than having every valid spelling in the English language, some writers would like a subset suitable for a less literate or less technical mass audience. Undefined words would then be highlighted and the choice of their use would be deliberate.
  In the same token there are several well known algorithms available to analyze the 'readability' of text. They output scores that roughly correspond to grade level.
  
• Some writers would like some kind of tagging to their text. This would be similar to a more general system of annotations. You could tag a paragraph "find sources" or "needs work" and then have some system to query the tag database in the document.

I'll more ideas posted later. I should have full requirements / feature plan document for version 1.0 up around 3 January.