My xwais client gets a list of docids from the WAIS server. I play gui-games with xwais until I get the list of documents that I like. I have already played gui-games with xftp to tell it where to put the files it retrieves. I've got my document. I think if we had a suite of these gui tools talking SMTP to each other, they could get a lot of work done.
Most tools fit in naturally.
It would then display the node and allow the user to scroll around and choose anchors etc. It could handle most anchors by itself, but it might want to let the user select a region of text and send it to the WAIS client. I hope I get time to try to implement a couple of these ideas. Then we can all see whether they're worth persuing.