Paper Submission

Patterns and Non-pattern-form Submissions

To reiterate the information provided in the Conference Announcement, we invite the submission of both patterns, and papers about patterns. Pattern papers should describe in pattern form an individual pattern, a collection of related patterns, or a fragment of a pattern language.

Papers about patterns should describe uses of accepted design patterns, how systems can be composed of known patterns, or provide in-depth, insightful and valuable discussions or analyses of exisiting patterns. All non-pattern-form papers will be shepherded and workshopped in the normal fashion.

Submission Details

We will need 2 documents for the submission: patterns document and the contact info document. Please email them to kplop@mcs.vuw.ac.nz

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.

This year we'll try to assemble the full proceedings on CD-ROM. To facilitate this process, we require all submissions to be either in PDF or Word format. 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.)

If you use Microsoft Word, you may have tools that export your document directly into PDF. If you don't, we'll handle the conversion from Word.

Finally, Adobe Acrobat converts a variety of formats into PDF.

If you cannot generate Word or PDF, please contact us at kplop@mcs.vuw.ac.nz for special arrangements.

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.)

Acceptance Criteria

The criteria for acceptance to a writer's workshop will include:

• Quality and maturity of the patterns (or non-pattern-form paper);
• Degree of improvement during the shepherding process, and openness of the authors to revisions; and
• Relevance of the pattern (or paper), based on the opinions of the program committee

Authors whose patterns or papers 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
• any of the books on domain-specific patterns (such as Small Memory Patterns ,
• 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.

Finally, your paper will be shepherded through a number of revisions to help ensure acceptance. An understanding of the process of shepherding can be gained from reading The Language of the Shepherds.