Future Plans - In General

 

The future plans for Author are ambitious, but achievable I'd like to think. Many are listed in separate sections on the main Author page, but here are a few more notes:

 

 

Equations

 

How about writing maths equations in Author and have them solved in real time?

 

 

'Auditions'

 

Do you use FCP X? How about 'Auditions' for paragraphs? You write one, then select it and write another one. You can then toggle later to see which one you'll stick with.

 

 

Full Grammar Interaction

 

How about getting full grammar interaction? All we have now is grunt: click. one word commands. How about: do this with that in this way then?

 

External Services

 

Integration with email services (resurrecting Liquid Information from the 90s) could give you smart folders/views, quick replies and no reply alerts - you can specify on sending an email that you need to be notified if you don't have a reply within a certain period of time. Emails carry full HTML so how about full Twitter threads in emails, which are sent on a new comment in a thread but only instantiate on opening the email?

 

Oh there is so much more...

 

 

 

The Future of our Media, the Future of Us

 

Benjamin Whorf's notion that language shapes the way we think puts some serious pressure on word processors. Word processors haven't really evolved since MacWrite and it could be argued that most popular word processors are less powerful than NLS was in the 60s. Word processors still remain very linear, very abstract (copy into the ether & paste) creatures. Word processor. Language tools are important and need to keep evolving:

 

 

...tools changed the pressures of natural selection and so changed the structure of man.

 

 Sherwood L. Washburn
(Scientific American Sep 1960)

 

 

...we are now coming to realize that humans and the machines they create are continuous...

 

Bruce Mazlish

 

 

It's not like the machines we use, the media, is separate from us so to evolve, we need to evolve in concert.