I'll freely admit I know basically zilch about software. My knowledge extended to "barely competent" back in the days of ones and zeros, and hasn't progressed much since. What I do know is that using an already existing template for something similar but not the same often creates its own problems later down the road. This is why the designers of the space shuttle had to deal with the aftermath of decisions made by Roman chariot-road builders. So instead of taking an already existing pencil-and-paper character sheet and lumping all my "it needs to do this" assumptions into just pointing at the character sheet and saying, "like that," I decided to start a thread to actually state explicitly what an RPG player's and/or GM's program or app should do.
All you guys feel free to jump in, but I'll start with the notion that made me begin this thread.
The core of what a character is, is a list of skills. Yes, there are stats and talents and etc, but the bottom line of a "character sheet" is to put the player's perception of the character, "He likes to _____", "He's good at _____", into terms you can add to a dice roll. Depending on the game system, that list can get pretty long and intimidating, and a player can get plenty frustrated trying to pick out the one skill he needs from such a list. So to that end, what about a... comparison log, I don't know what else to call it, that tracks how often the player references each skill, and changes the font color of the skill total accordingly? Skills you never use are in black, the most used 1/6th or so are in red, and it works its way through the spectrum down to the least used (but actually used) at violet.
Don't feel like you have to comment on that idea in particular, don't be bashful about "for my money, character software needs to _____" that's completely different, that's what this thread is for.