5th Annual Tcl/Tk Workshop '97

July 14-17, 1997
Boston, Massachusetts

Sponsored by the USENIX Association

Submission Due Dates:

PROGRAM COMMITTEE

Co-Chairs:
Joe Konstan, University of Minnesota
Brent Welch, Sun Microsystems Laboratories, Inc.

Program Committee:
Dave Beazley, University of Utah
Mark Harrison, DSC Communications
Jeffrey Hobbs, University of Oregon
George Howlett, Bell Labs Innovations for Lucent Technologies
Ray Johnson, Sun Microsystems Laboratories, Inc.
Kevin Kenny, General Electric Corporate R&D
Gerald Lester, Computerized Processes Unlimited, Inc.
Don Libes, NIST
John LoVerso, Open Group Research Institute
Michael J. McLennan, Bell Labs Innovations for Lucent Technologies
Brian Smith, Cornell University

The Fifth Annual Tcl/Tk Workshop is a forum to:

• Bring together Tcl/Tk researchers and practitioners
• Publish and present current work involving Tcl/Tk
• Learn about the latest developments in Tcl/Tk
• Plan for future Tcl/Tk related developments

The workshop program will include formal paper and panel presentations, poster and demonstration sessions, works in progress (WIP) sessions, birds of a feather (BOF) sessions, and tutorials.

This call provides detailed information on submitting papers, posters, demonstrations, and panel proposals. Information on registration and scheduling WIP and BOF sessions will be available separately in April, 1997.

FORMS OF PARTICIPATION

All forms of participation provide an opportunity to report on original Tcl/Tk research. Topics include, but are not limited to, system extensions, novel Tcl/Tk based applications, experience reports on building applications in Tcl/Tk, comparative evaluations of Tcl/Tk and other languages or toolkits for building applications, use of different programming paradigms in Tcl/Tk, and proposals for new directions. The audience for all submissions is practitioners and researchers who are experienced users of Tcl/Tk. For this reason, reports on experiences and applications must draw out lessons for other Tcl/Tk developers.

Papers

Papers are limited to ten pages, and authors of accepted papers will be given twenty minutes to present the paper at the workshop. A full version of the paper must be submitted for review. Papers must be written in the English language and paper authors are encouraged to include black-and-white figures in their papers.

Papers will be reviewed by the program committee and evaluated by the following criteria:

• Quantity and quality of novel content
• Relevance and interest of content to the Tcl/Tk Workshop audience
• Quality of presentation of content in the paper
• Suitability of content for presentation at the workshop

Papers should present a cohesive piece of work. Shorter papers are encouraged when the research covered can be adequately described and discussed in fewer pages. Papers may report on non-commercial or commercial Systems. Papers with blatant marketing content, however, will not be accepted.

In prior workshops, authors of papers describing applications built using Tcl/Tk and experiences using Tcl/Tk often encountered difficulties targeting the content to the workshop attendees. Application and experience papers need to strike a delicate balance between giving too little background on the application domain so that the audience cannot follow the paper, and devoting too much space to the application domain so that the relevance of Tcl/Tk is not addressed adequately. Application and experience papers should clearly explain how the application or experience illustrates a novel use of Tcl/Tk and what lessons the Tcl/Tk community can derive from the application or experience to apply to their own development efforts.

This workshop, like most conferences and journals, requires that papers not be submitted simultaneously to another conference or publication and that submitted papers not be previously or subsequently published elsewhere. Papers accompanied by "non-disclosure agreement" forms are not acceptable and will be returned to the author(s) unread. All submissions are held in the highest confidentiality prior to publication in the Proceedings, both as a matter of policy and in accord with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976.

Posters

Poster submissions are new for the 1997 Tcl/Tk workshop. They provide an opportunity to present interesting results, including preliminary results, with less time and effort than is typically needed for a paper. They are also the ideal submission category for submitting material that is better presented to small groups than as a large-group presentation.

Posters will be displayed during one day of the workshop and a poster session will provide an opportunity for workshop attendees to interact with poster authors individually and in small groups. The workshop will provide display space of approximately 3 feet wide by 4 feet high on which to display the poster. Poster authors should submit a draft of the poster contents along with a one-page abstract. Abstracts of accepted posters will be published in the conference proceedings.

Demonstrations

The Tcl/Tk Workshop is experimenting with a new format for demonstrations for 1997. We will be holding a demonstration reception on one of the evenings of the workshop at which demonstrations will be held in parallel, allowing attendees to more closely interact with the demonstrators. Space will be available for reviewed and informal demonstrations.

Reviewed demonstrations will be given a demonstration station for the entire session and will have an abstract published in the conference proceedings. Submissions should include both a one-page abstract and six copies of a videotape (VHS) showing the demonstration. Demonstrations judged to be of wide interest may also be asked to present a version of the demonstration during a conference session.

Informal demonstrations will be assigned a specific time during the demonstration session. Authors of accepted papers as well as those with demonstration-ready works in progress are encouraged to sign up for informal demonstration time slots. More information on the facilities available for informal demonstrations will be provided in the registration packet.

Demonstrations of commercial products of interest to the Tcl/Tk community are encouraged. The abstract for the proceedings, however, should avoid commercial content (i.e., it should not include pricing and sales information or marketing content).

Panel Proposals

The program committee is responsible for organizing panel discussion of up to 90-minutes on topics of interest to the workshop attendees. We invite panel proposals that include a list of panelists (who have agreed to serve on the panel), a topic and format, and a panel description for the proceedings with position statements from each panelist. Panels should have no more than four speakers, including the panel moderator, and should include substantial interaction with workshop attendees. Panels should not simply be presentations of related research papers -- papers should be submitted individually and the program committee will group them into sessions of related material.

WIP Presentations and BOF Sessions

Work in progress presentations and birds of a feather sessions are not reviewed. Both are available on a first-come, first served basis starting in June 1997. Specific instructions for reserving WIP and BOF time slots will be provided in the registration packet in April 1997. Some WIP and BOF time slots will be held open for on-site reservation, so we encourage all attendees with interesting work in progress to consider presenting that work at the workshop.

DETAILED SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS

We are accepting most workshop submissions electronically, via email. Paper, poster, and panel proposal submissions should be sent in two formats:

• Either Postscript or Acrobat files formatted for an 8.5 x 11 inch page. (Please be sure that it will print on a variety of printers.)
• Either plain text or HTML (standard mark-ups only, no browser- specific tags).

If accepted, both electronic and camera-ready hardcopy of the final version (full paper, poster abstract, or panel summary and position statements) will be required. Demonstrations should submit an electronic abstract, and also submit six copies of a VHS videotape showing the demonstration. The videotapes are for review purposes only, and cannot be returned. If accepted, both camera-ready and electronic versions of the abstract will be required.

Submission Checklist

For all submissions:

___ Cover letter including: names of all authors, primary contact full postal address, telephone number, fax number, email address, category of submission (paper, poster, demonstration, panel), which, if any, authors are full-time students, and a list of anticipated A/V needs (for planning only, not for review purposes). (plain text format only)

For papers:

___ Full contents of the paper, no longer than 10 pages. Paper should include title, authors and affiliations, abstract, content, and references. Paper should be submitted in plain text or HTML and Postscript or Acrobat formats.

For posters:

___ One page poster abstract that includes title, authors and affiliations, content, and, if appropriate, references. Abstract should be submitted in plain text or HTML and Postscript or Acrobat formats.

___ Poster draft indicating the poster contents and general layout. Draft should be submitted in plain text or HTML and Postscript or Acrobat formats.

For demonstrations:

___ One page demonstration abstract that includes title, authors and affiliations, content, and, if appropriate, references. Abstract should be submitted electronically in plain text or HTML and Postscript or Acrobat formats.

___ Six copies of a VHS videotape showing the demonstration (limited to 10 minutes). Videotape should show and describe the intended demonstration at a level sufficient to judge its appropriateness and interest for the Tcl/Tk Workshop.

For panel proposals:

___ Panel summary and position statements that includes a title for the panel, a summary of the background and topic of the panel, a list of panelists and their affiliations, and position statements from each panelist. The length of the summary should be from two to four pages. The summaries of accepted panels will be included in the conference proceedings. Summaries should be submitted electronically in plain text or HTML and either Postscript of Acrobat formats.

___ A panel format description that describes the format, intended timing, and plans for audience participation for the panel. This will be used for review purposes only and should be submitted in plain text format.

Transfer Guidelines for Electronic Submission

All components of each submission (text, postscript, cover page, etc.) should be transmitted together. Acceptable transmission mechanisms include: MIME mail using X-UUENCODE, BASE64, or QUOTED-PRINTABLE encoding for non-text files; or UUENCODED tar files (all files should be ./filename -- avoid absolute paths) with or without GZIP compression.

Submissions must be received by 11:59 PM, Pacific Time, on the date due. Acknowledgment will be sent by e-mail to the contact address. If you have not received acknowledgment within one week, contact the program co-chairs at tclchairs@usenix.org

Authors without email access may mail submissions on a 3.5 inch MS-DOS format floppy disk to the submission address below.

Submission Due Dates and Addresses

Paper, Demonstrations and Panel Proposals: March 11, 1997
Paper submissions primary contact notified: April 8, 1997
Poster submissions: April 22, 1997
Poster submissions primary contact notified: May 6, 1997
Camera-ready copy of all Accepted Submissions: June 3, 1997

All electronic submissions should be sent to:

tclpapers@usenix.org

All hardcopy submissions should be sent to:

Joe Konstan
Department of Computer Science
University of Minnesota
200 Union Street SE -- Room 4-192
Minneapolis, MN 55455

or

Brent Welch
Sun Microsystems Laboratories
2550 Garcia Avenue MS MTV29-232
Mountain View, CA 94043

More information on the workshop will be posted to comp.lang.tcl, comp.org.usenix, and placed on the World Wide Web at https://www.usenix.org as it becomes available.

REGISTRATION MATERIALS

Materials containing all details of the technical and tutorial programs, registration fees and forms, and hotel information will be available in April, 1997. If you wish to receive the registration materials, please contact:

USENIX Conference Office
22672 Lambert Street, Suite 613
Lake Forest CA 92630
(714) 588-8649
Fax: (714) 588-9706
email: conference@usenix.org