The HealthDoc authoring tool will be used to specify variations of a single document and the discourse structure of the document. The author enters ordinary English text and indicates the conditions under which each piece of text is relevant for a particular type of patient. The author also includes in the document supplemental linguistic information that is used by the rest of the HealthDoc system to perform linguistic "repair" of the document, to ensure that the final document is coherent and rhetorically effective. The linguistic information currently used by HealthDoc is rhetorical relations and coreference. The authoring tool provides facilities to indicate rhetorical relations between pieces of text and to indicate groups of words and phrases that are coreferential.

While the authoring tool was designed for the HealthDoc project, it could be used to author customizable documents on any topic. I explain tho steps performed by an author to create a customized document and I document the process a computer programmer would use to design an authoring tool for a given application. I also provide a list of recommended enhancements to the authoring tool that could be used in alternative designs or in subsequent implementations.