“Near term” is not easy to define for open source projects that are dependent on the available “free time” of unpaid contributors.
There has been some preliminary work on version 4 plug-ins this year. So far it has concentrated on the interaction between Audacity and Nyquist with particular emphasis on the Nyquist Plug-in GUI. The new features become available if the plug-in is “version 4”. Compatibility is maintained for version 1 to 3 plug-ins. As an example, for version 4 plug-ins, audio is passed to Nyquist in a new “TRACK” global which includes a number of properties including:
NAME - track name
TYPE - track type - wave, note, label, time
STIME - track start time - should probably be selection time
ETIME - track end time - should probably be selection time
(more can be added)
but for version 1 to 3 plug-ins the old “S” global is used as now.
We have a “wish list” for new Nyquist plug-in features here: Nyquist Wish List
It really needs writing up and prioritising as a proposal on the wiki, but I’ve not had time to do that yet. If there are features missing from that wish list, please add them.