Research on writing tools started with the increased availability of computers in the 1970s. After a first phase addressing the needs of programmers and data scientists, research in the late 1980s started to focus on writing-specific needs. Several projects aimed at supporting writers and letting them concentrate on the creative aspects of writing by having the writing tool take care of the mundane aspects using NLP techniques. Due to technical limitations at that time the projects failed and research in this area stopped. However, today's computing power and NLP resources make the ideas from these projects technically feasible; in fact, we see projects explicitly continuing from where abandoned projects stopped, and we see new applications integrating NLP resources without making references to those old projects. To design intelligent writing assistants with the possibilities offered by today's technology, we should re-examine the goals and lessons learned from previous projects to define the important dimensions to be considered.

翻译：写作工具的研究始于20世纪70年代计算机普及率的提升。在最初阶段满足程序员与数据科学家需求后，自80年代末起，研究开始聚焦于写作领域的特定需求。多个项目致力于辅助写作者，通过借助自然语言处理技术让写作工具承担日常事务性工作，使作者能专注于创作环节。由于当时技术的局限性，这些项目未能成功，相关研究一度停滞。然而，当今的计算能力与自然语言处理资源已使这些项目的构想具备技术可行性。实际上，我们既看到有项目明确延续了过往中断的研究，也观察到新应用整合自然语言处理资源时并未参考早期项目。为利用当今技术设计智能写作助手，我们应重新审视历史项目的目标与经验教训，界定需重点关注的核心维度。