AGILE Review meeting - April 2000
The aim of text planning
®Aim of text planning:
®Create a text plan that structures (or plans) the specified content as a text.
®What is (may be) involved:
®Inspection of the content specification
®Relation elements of the text plan with content
®Relating elements of the text plan (discourse structuring - specification of aggregation)
The content specification details out how content is related in a meaningful way. In the setting of AGILE, we deal with instructional texts, and the content specification therefore usually details how goals are obtained by carrying out particular steps, whereby steps might have side-effects, and may -for example- only apply in the context of a certain operating system/platform, etc.

It goes without saying that such a content specification does not necessarily present the content exactly in the sequential way as it would –ideally- be presented in a text that realizes that content. The aim of the text planner therefore is to create a structure that organizes the content in such a way that it becomes aimenable for sequential presentation – a text plan.

When creating a text plan, the text planner usually has to perform a variety of tasks. The most fundamental tasks are inspecting the content specification, and relate the elements building up the text plan to the pieces of content that they are planning. Furthermore, within the text plan, the text planner needs to organize and relate the text plan elements so as to ensure a smooth textual flow – notably, through the use of various forms of aggregation.