Intentional structures of documents

Abstract

Document structures constitute a means to organize document parts in terms of logical elements (e.g. headings, paragraphs, sections, etc.). Document structures can be looked at in terms of layout and formatting features such as pages, columns, and so on. Despite the wide diversity of document structures, authors intentions are not taken into account. The concept of intentions is considered here as the effects that authors intend to have on their readers. It includes the reasons that led the authors to write the document and to select certain features instead of others. Intentional structures are a set of relations between document fragments that make explicit authors' intentions. Intentional structures are generally implicit. We want to help authors to make some of their intentions more explicit. This paper presents a new model based on speech act theory dealing with intentional structures and arguments of how it can be used to enhance written communication.