PLoP 2000 Submission Information

Deadline!

Monday, May 8^th, 2000, 5:00 PM CST (hard deadline). 

Process

We need two documents:

1. Your patterns document (PDF)  --> Note that we changed the format for the submission(see below).
2. Your contact info document (plain text)

Submission is a two step process:

1. FTP your documents onto the submission server ftp://brain.cs.uiuc.edu
2. Send an e-mail message to the submission address plop-2000-submissions@jerry.cs.uiuc.edu

Getting accepted

• Acceptance criteria
• Improving your chances

Detailed Submission Process

Your Patterns Document

Authors should submit an electronic copy in English by the aformentioned deadline. There is no limit on the length of Patterns submissions; they should be as long as necessary to fully describe the patterns (most papers submitted to previous PLoPs have been 20 pages or less).

To ease the shepherding and workshop process, for submissions longer than 10 pages (2000 words) please designate a 10 page section to be reviewed in detail. When preparing your submission, remember that readers often prefer concise writing. Please contact the program chair if you have any other questions about the paper length, or how to select sections for detailed review.

To facilitate the assemble of the full proceedings on CD-ROM, we require all submissions to be in PDF format. Note that we also allowed Word format before but the problems that we may have with the conversion may slow down all the process, so we decided to ask the authors to do the conversions. You can generate PDF in several ways:

• If you can generate PostScript, GhostScript does a pretty good job of converting it into PDF. (GhostScript binaries for various platforms are available free of charge.)
• Also, Adobe Acrobat converts a variety of formats into PDF.
If you cannot generate PDF, please contact us at plop-2000@jerry.cs.uiuc.edu for special arrangements.

Your Contact Info Document

Submissions must be accompanied by an ASCII text file containing the following information.
1. The paper's title
2. Author's name(s). If there is more than one author, indicate which author is the primary contact person
3. Email addresses for all authors
4. Postal address for the primary contact
5. Phone number for the primary contact
6. An abstract for the submission (important -- Shepherds will decide whether they will shepherd a paper or not based on this abstract.)
7. The ftp directory name you used as explained in the Submission Process - Step One

FTP Your Documents onto the Submission Server

Submissions are being handled electronically. We are taking submissions via anonymous ftp to:

ftp://brain.cs.uiuc.edu

You should create a directory name based upon the last name of the contact author for your paper. If a directory by that name is already present, append a digit to the name to distinguish it from the existing directory. Make sure that you have indicated the BINARY setting to your ftp client before you transmit your submission.

For example, an author named "Alexander" might do the following:

ftp brain.cs.uiuc.edu
USER anonymous
PASS anything
MKDIR Alexander
CD Alexander
BINARY
PUT Alexander.pdf
PUT Alexander.txt
QUIT

where the Alexander.pdf is the paper he is submitting and Alexander.txt is his contact info document.

Should you want to resubmit an updated version of your paper, you will have to use a different name-- for security reasons, the ftp server doesn't allow deletes, renames or overwrites. For example, to update Alexander.pdf you will upload Alexander1.pdf (in the same directory). Once submission closes, we will use the file with the highest submission number. There is no need to resubmit the ASCII text file or to notify us about the update.
 

Send an E-mail Message to the Submission Address

You should notify us that your submission has been made by sending email with the subject

PLoP 2000 Submission: Yourname

where Yourname is the directory name you used in the Submission Process - Step One, to:

plop-2000-submissions@jerry.cs.uiuc.edu

Please paste your contact info document information into the email message.

Submissions will be acknowleged by email once your submission has been processed. If you do not receive an email acknowledgement within three business days of your submission, please contact us at the email address above.
 

Acceptance Criteria

The criteria for acceptance to a writers' workshop will include:
• Quality and maturity of the patterns;
• Degree of improvement during the shepherding process, and openness of the authors to revisions; and
• Relevance of the pattern, based on the opinions of the program committee
Authors whose patterns are not accepted for formal workshopping may also attend the conference. As in previous years, we will have activities to develop pattern writing skills.

Suggestions for Improving Your Chances of Acceptance

One of the best ways to learn how to write successful patterns is to read successful patterns. Therefore, look at:
• the PLoP online proceedings (see the main PLoP page)
• the PLoP books: PLoPD-1, PLoPD-2, PLoPD-3 and PLoPD-4.
• and the landmark pattern books, such as:
• Design Patterns (GoF)
• Pattern-Oriented Software Architure (POSA)
Do not limit yourself to technical material. Alexander's A Pattern Language presents patterns from the realm of building in a clear, engaging, erudite fashion.

A fine place to start is "A Pattern Language for Pattern Writing" by Gerard Meszaros and Jim Doble, which simultaneously presents patterns for writing patterns, and examples of their use. This paper appeared in the PLoPD-3 book.