Wow!  Having grown up on Infocom adventures and their current freeware
descendants, I had no idea so many variations of style were possible. The "pane"
and "frame" concepts really helped me compartmentalize the playing field of an
adventure game and think of it as a collection of parts working together.
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     But I think the system for classifying panes needs a different foundation.
Presumably the purpose of dividing a game's frame into panes is to isolate areas
of the frame that fulfill different functions and therefore should be talked
about separately. It follows that the first categorization of panes should
separate them by function; whether they contain text or graphics can be addressed
in subcategories of these divisions. Perhaps these broad categories themselves
don't need names, but they can organize the presentation of specific varieties of
panes.
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     The purpose of a text adventure is twofold: to represent events, places, and
objects (i.e., a story) to a player, and to respond to the player's orders for
manipulating these things. Accordingly, we can divide panes into two main types:
those that help tell a story to a player ("story" panes), and those that help the
player give orders affecting the story ("command" panes). There are also
"background" panes that don't do either of the above, but instead convey some
information or experience that a player would need only occasionally (e.g.,
status lines, decorative borders).
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     But to specifics. First, I found the opening sentences rather abstract. Talk
about "text streams" would be fine in an article on the computer-scientific or
artistic foundations of text adventures, but in an article about text adventure
interfaces I think you can assume the audience has a good idea what text
adventures themselves are. It's good to mention the Infocom interface at the
start, since that's what most people think is the be-all end-all of interfaces;
I'd suggest using it more directly as a touchstone in the opening, along the
lines of: "When many text-adventure fans think about what a text adventure should
look like on the screen, they think of the Infocom interface: a long list of
descriptions and commands scrolling up the screen, with a command prompt at the
bottom and a single line at the top giving some background information. They
don't realize that nearly every part of this user interface has been varied by
other games. Some games have a palette of buttons for fast navigation, some games
keep the player's inventory visible at all times, some create a more 'literary'
feel by keeping the list of previous commands in a small window at the bottom and
a continuous stream of story in the main part of the screen. This doesn't even
address the many ways graphics have been employed. Each of these changes in style
changes the game experience, and now that new programming tools are making it
easier to create these fancy interfaces, designers would be wise to give more
time to the question of how their game should look. This article contributes to
such efforts by classifying text-adventure interfaces systematically." An opening
like this would show designers that they've been taking the Infocom model for
granted and encourage them to read on to see what they've been missing.
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     Then you can describe frames and panes in general, based on their function
as story, command, or background panes, using the Infocom model as a standard and
opening into a more general definition. ("In the standard Infocom interface,
players type their commands at a command prompt at the bottom of the screen. Any
pane that the player uses to control the game is called a *command* pane. Some
simple variations include...")
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     After introducing the article and defining terms, you can closely examine
story, command, and background panes in three separate sections. In the section
on story panes, you can describe the "text," "graphic," and "hybrid" story panes,
their scrollability and changability, etc. The section on command panes can
describe command lines and menus. (In one or the other of these sections can be
placed a treatment of graphic story panes with clickable objects or movable
characters (a la King's Quest), which are sort of hybrid story/command panes.)
The section on background panes can describe status lines and borders in their
many forms. You might want to point out that a pane which is mainly regarded by a
player as one of these types can have elements of other types (e.g., the status
line in Pytho's Mask that can drop down a list of conversation options which must
be selected in the command line, a screen border that tastefully presents a
clickable compass rose), but that this classification does highlight the features
a designer finds it most important to keep track of. You can then discuss a few
of the interfaces (which you mention already) that cleverly combine these three
types of panes and conclude by suggesting some new interfaces that your
classification system suggests that designers ought to try. 
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     The content of the article is well-researched, but it needs to be
synthesized; right now it reads like a bare chronicle of interfaces. However you
decide to organize the article, I think it should treat different types of panes
in different sections that start with description and end with discussions of the
effects the different variations have *on the player's experience of the work*.
If the story text of a work is displayed with commands in between or as a
continuous stream a la a novel, how does the game feel in each case? How should
the game text be written in each case? (Presumably a novel-like text stream would
change one-word replies like "Taken." into "You take the sword." Is the
novel-like interface better for third-person games?) Do verb menus make an
all-text game more convenient for a player, or do they turn it into a choose your
own adventure book? (I saw an article in which one of the Infocom designers said
the best part about text adventures with command lines was the illusion that they
created of being able to do anything at any time.) What are the different effects
produced by graphic story panes that have a single image for each location and by
those that change whenever the player takes certain actions such as examining an
object or talking to a person? Would a detective game feel impressionistic and
film-noir-ish if it was basically text except when you talked to a person, at
which point a picture of their face on a blank background would appear? What do
we make of background panes that change without any overt mention in the story
text, such as the changing decorative borders in Zork Zero, the clock that
literally slows down in Jigsaw (in the Archduke assassination scene) after the
game says "Time seems to slow down as you perceive it all with helpless
accuracy," or the four emotional states in the Metamorphoses status line that
look rather enigmatic until you accomplish the first task that eliminates one of
them? 
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     The quote boxes and menus also raise questions. How are quote boxes
received, as the author's footnotes or as associational leaps in the player's
mind? Does it make a difference whether they scroll up with the text or disappear
after one move? Regarding menus, do you think more games should include manuals
in menu format like those in Curses and Christminster? (I actually enjoyed the
manuals in those games!) How about backstory?
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     There's lots of interesting detail here, but including some of this sort of
aesthetic material would make the article more generally interesting. (Finally,
two nitpicks. In the footnote in which you talk about "valuators," just say that
they accept numbers, not "real" numbers---they certainly don't accept numbers
like pi or e. Also, I don't think it's a "dubious" distinction that Shadowgate
was released for the Nintendo Entertainment System---at the time it was released,
it marked a totally new direction for console video games that if expanded on
today might lead more video gamers to text adventures. In any case, unless the
value of graphic and menu interfaces for translating the games into other markets
is mentioned, the remark comes off as a cheap potshot.)
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