If we are to proceed with an Erasmotron for Writers, the very first question is, what will be the monitor size? I had indulged myself the luxury of requiring a large monitor in the initial design, but can we now shrink it down to fit in 640 x 480? That will be tough, as the current design assumes 1024 x 768, or 768K pixels, where the 640 x 480 screen has only 300K pixels &emdash; less than half the total screen space.
Nonetheless, there are a few things we can do to conserve screen space. The menus in the role editor can be relocated to the main menubar. The display could be further broken down so that less information is present on a single view. This of course slows down the user, but the information would be there if they need it.
I have prepared some sample screens that show what the new screen arrangements would look like. I don't know, this is not going to be easy. These new screens are really quite tiny, and the cleanliness of the original design is greatly compromised. Perhaps I need to think this through more carefully.