Importance evaluation is one of the most challenging problems in the field of text processing. In the paper we focus on the notion of importance from a computational standpoint, and we propose a procedural, rule-based approach to importance evaluation. T h i s novel approach is supported by a prototype experimental system, called importance evaluator, that can deal with descriptive texts taken from computer science l i t e r a t u r e on operating systems. The evaluator relies on a set of importance rules that are used to assign importance values to the different parts.
