Developments in Language Theory: 12th International Conference

The 12th International Conference on Developments in Language Theory (DLT 2008)washeld at KyotoSangyoUniversity, Kyoto, September 16-19,2008. This wasthesecondtimeDLTtookplaceinKyoto. PreviousDLTswereheldinTurku (1993), Magdeburg (1995), Thessaloniki (1997), Aachen (1999), Vienna (2001), Kyoto (2002), Szeged (2003), Auckland (2004), Palermo (2005), Santa Barbara (2006) and Turku (2007). These will be followed by the next DLT in Stuttgart (2009). Thetopics dealt with atthe conferencewere: grammars, acceptorsandtra- ducers for words, trees and graphs; algebraic theories of automata; algorithmic, combinatorial and algebraic properties of words and languages; variable length codes;symbolicdynamics;cellularautomata;polyominoesandmultidimensional patterns; decidability questions; image manipulation and compression; e?cient text algorithms; relationships to cryptography, concurrency, complexity theory and logic; bio-inspired computing; quantum computing. TheProgramCommitteeselected36papersfrom102submittedpapers. Each submitted paper was evaluated by at least three members of the ProgramC- mittee. All 36 selected papers are contained in this volume together with 6 invited papers. The editors thank the members of the Program Committee for the evaluation of the papers and the many referees who assisted the Program Committee members in this process. We are also grateful to the contributors to DLT 2008, in particular to the invited speakersfor the realization of a successful conference. Moreover, wethanktheOrganizingCommitteeforitssplendedwork, inparticularSzabolcsIv anforhis technicalassistance. Without his assistance, it would have been impossible to perform the paper selecting process. Finally, we would like to express our gratitude to the Steering Committee for its support, in particular to Prof. Grzegorz Rozenberg for his valuable advice. This conference was dedicated to his 65th birthday. The conference was supported by Kyoto Sangyo University and the Japanese SocietyforthePromotionofScience.