Developments in Language Theory 8th International Conference, DLT 2004, Auckland, New Zealand, December 13-17, Proceedings

The main subjects of the Developments in Language Theory (DLT) conf- ence series are formal languages, automata, conventional and unconventional computation theory, and applications of automata and language theory. T- ical, but not exclusive, topics of interest include: grammars and acceptors for strings, graphs, and arrays; e'cient text algorithms; combinatorial and al- braic properties of languages; decision problems; relations to complexity theory andlogic;picturedescriptionandanalysis;cryptography;concurrency;andDNA and quantum computing. The members of the steering committee of DLT are: J. Berstel (Paris), M. Ito(Kyoto), W. Kuich(Vienna), G. P? aun(BucharestandSeville), A. Restivo (Palermo), G. Rozenberg (chair, Leiden), A. Salomaa (Turku) and W. Thomas (Aachen). The ?rst DLT conference was organized by G. Rozenberg and A. Salomaa in Turku in 1993. After this, the DLT conferences were held in every odd year: Magdeburg(1995), Thessaloniki(1997), Aachen(1999)andVienna(2001). Since 2001, a DLT conference has been organized in every odd year in Europe and in every even year outside Europe. The last two DLT conferences were organized in Kyoto, Japan in 2002 and Szeged, Hungary in 2003. The titles of the volumes of the past DLT conferences are the following: 1. Developments in Language Theory. At the Crossroads of Mathematics, C- puter Science and Biology (edited by G. Rozenberg and A. Salomaa) (1994) (World Scienti'c) 2. Developments in Language Theory II. At the Crossroads of Mathematics, Computer Science and Biology (edited by J. Dassow, G. Rozenberg and A. Salomaa) (1996) (World Scienti'c) 3. Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Developments in L- guageTheory(editedbyS.