The Tale
Didier Verna
Invitation
Submission
Interlude
Proof-Reading
Conclusion
It all started like this. . .
May 07 2011: invitation to author a CS book chapter
Objective of the Book
. . . original academic work about current research . . .
a comprehensive overview . . . comprehensive material
. . . provide new results and answers to some open
problems . . . indispensable for researcher and
practitioners as well as for educators . . .
Target Audience
. . . researchers and professionals . . . who would like to
have comprehensive understanding . . . useful resource
for graduate and undergraduate level courses
Proposal sent on June 14 2011
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The Tale
Didier Verna
Invitation
Submission
Interlude
Proof-Reading
Conclusion
It all started like this. . .
July 20 2011: proposal acceptance
. . . proposal has been accepted . . . a chapter template
available at http://.../template.doc . . . enclosed
some instructions . . . your adherence to those guidelines is
very important . . .
[1. Chapter Organization and Formatting.docx]
[2. Details to keep in mind.docx]
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The Tale
Didier Verna
Invitation
Submission
Interlude
Proof-Reading
Conclusion
It all started like this. . .
July 21/22 2011: Questions & Answers
Questions
Copyright? Contract? Publication? (online, paper, for
sale, open source license, royalties etc.)
Answer
My responsibility is out of scope of publishing. At this
point I don’t have the answers to your questions. I need
to contact the publisher.
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The Tale
Didier Verna
Invitation
Submission
Interlude
Proof-Reading
Conclusion
Let’s be clever. . .
October 04 2011: Initial submission
I’m attaching my chapter below. Some remarks about it:
- it’s in PDF form and the source code is L
A
T
E
X. I’m aware of
the requirements from the publisher, but there’s no way I
can work with Word. If the chapter is finally accepted, I will
of course convert it to something acceptable.
reviewing period (contents only)
final acceptance on March 10 2012 (contents only ;-)
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The Tale
Didier Verna
Invitation
Submission
Interlude
Proof-Reading
Conclusion
Not so much. . .
April 02 2012: deadline for final Word document
Last minute easy (automatic) fixes
(unnumbered sections, no embedded figures etc.)
Last minute PDF to Word conversion
Big mistake!
Font size: ok
Lost mostly everything else: figures, font shapes and
families, verbatim formatting etc.
Wrong bibliographic style (not strict APA)
Second big mistake!
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The Tale
Didier Verna
Invitation
Submission
Interlude
Proof-Reading
Conclusion
Not so much. . .
April 02 2012: deadline for final Word document
Some examples
Calcagno, C., Taha, W., Huang, L., and Leroy, X. (2003).
Calcagno, C., Taha, W., Huang, L., & Leroy, X. (2003).
Manipulation (PEPM), pages 95-99. ACM SGPLAN.
Manipulation (PEPM) (pp. 95-99). ACM SGPLAN.
Symbolic Computation, 13(1-2):51-55.
Symbolic Computation, 13(1-2), 51-55.
Let alone incorrect or incomplete BIBTeX entries, wrong
ordering, missing italics etc.
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The Tale
Didier Verna
Invitation
Submission
Interlude
Proof-Reading
Conclusion
Marketing
August 28 2012: Mad Men
From: marketeer #1
Greetings! . . . personally thank you for your excellent
contribution! [ lots of marketing crap ] Your development
editor, [marketeer #2], very much enjoyed working with you,
and now as your marketing representative, I look forward to
assisting you with your promotional efforts.
I have also created an Exclusive Discount Offer form. This
form allows you to order one or more copies with our
exclusive author discount.
You will hear from us again regarding how to access a
complimentary PDF copy of your individual chapter in the
book.
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The Tale
Didier Verna
Invitation
Submission
Interlude
Proof-Reading
Conclusion
Copyright
April 2 2012: Some questions answered
2. Author(s) understand that no royalties or remuneration will be
paid by the Publisher to the author for the above named submitted
manuscript. Further, Author(s) acknowledge the manuscript is
being provided on a volunteer basis for the professional
recognition obtained by the publication.
5. The Publisher will have the right to edit the work for the original
edition and for any revision, provided that the meaning of the text
is not materially altered.
6. The Publisher will furnish 1 copy of the book to the lead Author
of each chapter without charge. The coauthor (s) of the
manuscript will receive a copy of the manuscript along with a copy
of the title page of the book. Copies of the book for the
author’s/co-author’s use may be purchased at a 40% discount
from the list price.
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The Tale
Didier Verna
Invitation
Submission
Interlude
Proof-Reading
Conclusion
Proof-reading
September 11 2012: round 1
From: yet@another.guy
I am very pleased to send you the proof of the book. Please
copy and paste this link into your browser:
http://.../EditorProof.pdf
Deadline: 6 days later
Please check the following items: . . .
** Please do not be concerned with house style layout
application, such as font type / size; title and subtitle styles;
spacing and formatting **
20/36
The Tale
Didier Verna
Invitation
Submission
Interlude
Proof-Reading
Conclusion
Proof-reading
September 17 2012: end of round 1
There are many things that have gone wrong in my chapter.
Some of them may belong to your "do not be concerned
with house style" category, but they are so worrying that I
need to mention them anyway.
By decreasing DEFCON level:
- Figures swapped
- Code excerpts messed up
- Inline quotes layout gone
- Floats positions and references messed up
- Fancy spacing
21/36
The Tale
Didier Verna
Invitation
Submission
Interlude
Proof-Reading
Conclusion
Indentation problems
Code excerpts messed up
Before
(make-face ’a-face
:face (make-face ’subface-1)
:face (make-face ’subface-2))
After
(make-face ’a-face
:face (make-face ’subface-1)
:face (make-face ’subface-2))
And many more (e.g. hyphenation!!). . .
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The Tale
Didier Verna
Invitation
Submission
Interlude
Proof-Reading
Conclusion
Inline quotes layout gone
Before
In addition to that, the use of several languages in
parallel, within the same application, may be regarded as a
disadvantage (Ghosh, 2011):
Unless carefully controlled, this polyglot
programming can lead to a language cacophony
and result in bloated design.
Indeed, every time a standalone DSL needs to be
extended, the whole language production chain may need
to be modified in ways that were not anticipated.
26/36
The Tale
Didier Verna
Invitation
Submission
Interlude
Proof-Reading
Conclusion
Inline quotes layout gone
After
In addition to that, the use of several languages in
parallel, within the same application, may be regarded as a
disadvantage (Ghosh, 2011):
Unless carefully controlled, this polyglot programming
can lead to a language cacophony and result in bloated
design.
Indeed, every time a standalone DSL needs to be
extended, the whole language production chain may need
to be modified in ways that were not anticipated.
27/36
The Tale
Didier Verna
Invitation
Submission
Interlude
Proof-Reading
Conclusion
Float positions and references messed up
Examples
Here is how you would create an option face displaying bold
text in a cyan foreground, as demonstrated in Box 1.
Weird sentences
. . . is given below in Box 10.
Hint: the box below is Box 9. . .
Which we can use like this as shown in Box 4:
Standalone paragraph
Not even a sentence
box not even here!
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The Tale
Didier Verna
Invitation
Submission
Interlude
Proof-Reading
Conclusion
Fancy spacing
Examples
INTRODUCTION
Domain-specific language (DSL) design and
implementation is inherently a transverse activity
(Ghosh, 2010; Fowler, 2010). It usually requires
from the product team knowledge and expertise in
both the application domain and language design
and implementation, two completely orthogonal
areas of expertise. From the programming lan-
guage perspective, one additional complication
is that being an expert developer in one specific
programming language does not make you an
expert in language design and implementation -
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The Tale
Didier Verna
Invitation
Submission
Interlude
Proof-Reading
Conclusion
Fancy spacing
Examples
only in using one of them. DSLs, however, are
most of the time completely different from the
mainstream languages in which applications are
written. A general-purpose programming language
(GPL), suitable to write a large application, is
generally not suited to domain specific modeling,
precisely because it is too general. Using a GPL
for domain-specific modeling would require too
much expertise from the end-users and wouldn’t
be expressive enough for the very specific domain
the application is supposed to focus on.
As a consequence, it is often taken for granted
that when a DSL is part of a larger application, it
has to be completely different from the applica-
tion’s GPL. But what if this assumption was wrong
in the first place ?
In addition to that, the use of several languages
in parallel, within the same application, may be
regarded as a disadvantage (Ghosh, 2011):
Unless carefully controlled, this polyglot
programming can lead to a language cacophony
and result in bloated design.
Indeed, every time a standalone DSL needs
to be extended, the whole language production
chain may need to be modified in ways that were
not anticipated.
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The Tale
Didier Verna
Invitation
Submission
Interlude
Proof-Reading
Conclusion
Fancy spacing
Examples
E
mbedded Heterogeneous DSLs:
The first
approach consists in a two-steps process:
first a DSL program is converted into a host
GPL one by means of external program
transformation tools such as Stratego/XT
(Bravenboer et al., 2006) or Silver (Wyk et
al., 2008). Then, the resulting transformed
program is passed on to the original GPL’s
infrastructure.
Embedded
Homogeneous DSLs:
An alter-
native view, however, is that some GPLs are
flexible enough to let you implement a DSL
merely as an extension to themselves. Here,
“extension” means the ability to modify some
aspects of the original GPL, in syntactic or
even semantic terms.
Embedded DSLs in general offer the advantage
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The Tale
Didier Verna
Invitation
Submission
Interlude
Proof-Reading
Conclusion
Proof-reading
September 21 2012: round 2
From: no-reply
I would like to take this opportunity to express our many
thanks for your excellent contribution . . .
At the following link you will be able to access a printable
copy of your final typeset chapter in PDF format . . .
Still lots of (old and new) problems in the final version. . .
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