November 08, 2004
-----------------


Dear colleagues and friends,


Enclosed you will find the 

     Preliminary Call for Papers

     for

     DCFS 2005 - Descriptional Complexity of Formal Systems.


Following the practice of having DCFS alternate on a yearly basis
between Europe and North America, DCFS'05 will take place in
Europe, i.e., in Como, Italy. 

We hope that many of you will submit papers and will attend
DCFS'05.


With best wishes,

Giovanni Pighizzini      University of Milan
Detlef Wotschke          University of Frankfurt, IFIP WG 1.2
   
==================================================================

Preliminary Call for Papers
---------------------------

      DCFS 2005 - Descriptional Complexity of Formal Systems

        will be held at Como, Italy, June 30 - July 2, 2005.


DCFS and its predecessors DCAGRS (Descriptional Complexity of
Automata, Grammars and Related Structures) and FDSR (Formal
Descriptions and Software Reliability) were previously held in
Paderborn (1998); Magdeburg (1999); Boca Raton (1999); London,
Ontario, (2000); San Jose (2000); Vienna (2001); London,
Ontario, (2002); Budapest (2003); and London, Ontario, (2004).

DCFS 2005 will be jointly organized by the IFIP Working Group
1.2 on Descriptional Complexity and by the Dipartimento di
Informatica e Comunicazione (DICo) and Dipartimento di Scienze
dell'Informazione (DSI) of the University of Milan.

It will take place immediately after

   CIAA 2005 - Tenth International Conference on Implementation
                and Application of Automata
                University of Nice, Sophia Antipolis, France,
                June 27 - 29, 2005,


and immediately before


    DLT 2005 - Ninth International Conference on Developements
                in Language Theory
                Mondello, Palermo, Italy, July 4 - 8, 2005,


and will thus make it easy to attend CIAA, DCFS, and DLT.


Submissions concerning the descriptional complexity of formal
systems and structures (and its applications) are invited for
DCFS 2005.


Topics include, but are not limited to:

--   various measures of descriptional complexity of automata,
      grammars, languages and of related systems
--   trade-offs between descriptional complexity and mode of
      operation
--   circuit complexity of Boolean functions and related
      measures
--   succinctness of description of (finite) objects
--   descriptional complexity in resource-bounded or
      structure-bounded environments
--   structural complexity
--   descriptional complexity of formal systems for
      applications (e.g. software reliability, software and
      hardware testing, modelling of natural languages)
--   descriptional complexity aspects of nature-motivated
      (bio-inspired) architectures and unconventional models of
      computing


In accordance with the spirit of a workshop, the program
committee will try to accept as many papers as possible,
provided that their scientific quality is high and merits
acceptance.  If the number of such papers exceeds the number of
time slots for "regular" presentation, the program committee
will try to accept some papers as "short" papers.


Instructions for submissions:
-----------------------------

The instructions for submissions will be available later.



Invited Speakers (preliminary list):
------------------------------------

Alberto Bertoni     (Milano, Italy)
Egon Boerger        (Pisa, Italy)
Viliam Geffert      (Kosice, Slovak Republic)
Juraj Hromkovic     (Zurich, Switzerland)


Program Committee:
------------------

Cristian Calude                (Auckland)
Christian Choffrut             (Paris)
Erzsebet Csuhaj-Varju          (Budapest)
Juergen Dassow                 (Magdeburg)
Michael Harrison               (Berkeley)
Oscar Ibarra                   (Santa Barbara)
Lucian Ilie                    (London, Ontario)
Martin Kutrib                  (Giessen)
Carlos Martin-Vide             (Tarragona)
Carlo Mereghetti               (Milano)
Giovanni Pighizzini (Co-Chair) (Milano)
Arto Salomaa                   (Turku)
Kai Salomaa                    (Kingston, Ontario)
Jacques Sakarovitch            (Paris)
Petr Sosik                     (London, Ontario and Opava)
Detlef Wotschke     (Co-Chair) (Frankfurt/Main)


Organizing Committee:
---------------------

Carlo Mereghetti               (Milano)
Beatrice Palano                (Milano)
Giovanni Pighizzini            (Milano)


Proceedings:
------------

All accepted and invited papers will appear in the Proceedings,
which will be available at the conference.  In addition,
selected papers will be published in a special journal issue.



The DCFS 2005 deadlines are as follows:

      Deadline for submissions:                 March 30,   2005
      Notification of acceptance or rejection:  May 10,     2005
      Final copy for the proceedings:           June 1,     2005
      Workshop:                           June 30 - July 2, 2005

For further information, please consult:

      http://dcfs05.dico.unimi.it/


Giovanni Pighizzini       University of Milan
Detlef Wotschke           University of Frankfurt, IFIP WG 1.2