The thing that would improve the story editor would be to strip it of features and de-clutter the Story Editor window. As it is it does many things but poorly. The one thing that people extol is that they can access any portion of long text faster and easier. Why not make a sprinter out of the Story Editor.
I just don't use it myself. I do all work in the text frame and prefer to be able to truly see what I am getting with no wasted clicks. The story editor is one more place where a task is done via remote control and way too many clicks. My point is not to suggest the removal of the Story Editor, but to say that what I hear people say it does best is a simple function - text review and editing. Why waste all sorts of developer time making an involved wysiwyg story editor? I'd say push its feature set back to a text editor that preserves but does not try to show formatting. I cannot see the true effects of formatting outside of the true text frame. I don't see the point of trying to create and control style in one place by looking somewhere else. It would be a better use of scarce developer time to de-feature the story editor than to create an overloaded remote control tool.
