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I believe I attended the same forum. Two months late... I was distracted... but I just noticed the article. Just three notes, for posterity:
First, government personnel were evidently well represented in the audience, and vendors no doubt tuned presentations to address concerns (actual or merely perceived) of those prospects. Many had also worked with SGML.
Second, the discussion of line numbers struck me as a requirement by fiat, rather than an intrinsic characteristic of the problem. That is, line numbering was required because it had always been done that way, the laws passed had required them, and when you print laws you use line numbers for references. However, new generations may be more willing to adopt new conventions, and change the law to suit modern practices. Despite this, I think Kendall's observation still stands. There exist local requirements whose nuances or ideosyncracies will impact the feasibility of applying off the shelf, generic editing interfaces.
Third, the previous note relates directly to the Visual Script product. My impression of the product is that it hits a particular local nail squarely on the head. For firms with heavy reliance upon CAD/CAM/CAE infrastructures, products which take an approach similar to Visual Script provide a great promise for increasing automation while possibly reducing reliance on proprietary design tools. Such firms often have teams dedicated toward integrating and deploying design tools. Visual Script was presented in the forum as an end-user tool, but as a tool integrator I can see obvious applications in the corporate R&D engineering domain. I don't see VS being used for documents heavy in text content, but for an engineering organization it could be a very good tool to have in the toolbox. (This isn't an endorsement; I don't have an affiliation with the vendor, and haven't yet really reviewed the product.)
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