Questions about the submission process may be sent to wdag96-help@cs.unibo.it.
The electronic submission of papers is made possible by some experimental software being developed by Sam Rebelsky (samr@cs.dartmouth.edu) and SIGACT's Electronic Publishing Board. Email is the only method of electronic submission (no ftp). All electronic submissions must be in postscript. Because of the experimental nature of the software, because email can be unreliable, and because "good" postscript files can fail to print on "good" postscript printers, the program committee cannot assume responsiblity for technical problems or problems with postscript. If you intend to submit your paper electronically, we strongly encourage you to test the submission procedures using the process described below under email submission.
The electronic submission procedure involves sending commands via email to a server at wdag96-submit@cs.unibo.it. Please do not send anything else to this address. All questions or comments destined for a human being must go to wdag96-help@cs.unibo.it.
The basic procedure involves two steps:
Please be patient and wait at least several hours for the acknowledgement of your last request before repeating any action with the server (or sending mail to wdag96-help@cs.unibo.it). As specialists in distributed systems, we all know that network delays can be significant at times. Email is rather reliable and will try delivery for up to 3 days before giving up. This is yet another good reason why you should not wait until the last minute for submitting.
After you have submitted your paper, you can revise your paper (at most once) by sending a revise command to the server, or you can withdraw your paper by sending a withdraw command. At any time, you can ask the server for help by sending a help command, and you can ask the server for the current status of your paper (i.e., registered, submitted, revised, withdrawn; not its reviewing status) by sending a status command.
It is possible to practice submitting a paper before doing the real submission. First you send a test register command to the server and wait for it to acknowledge the test registration with a test filename, and then you send a submit command containing the test filename and the test postscript file.
It is also possible to test the printability of a postscript file (before or after registering it) by sending a test print command to the server containing the postscript file in the message body. You will receive an acknowledgement containing a list of the errors found. This test is the same quick check for postscript errors performed when you submit your paper by email with the submit command.
Since electronic submissions have no cover letter, please put information that would normally be in a cover letter on the first page of your submission. In particular, the call for papers requests that the name, address, email, telephone number and fax number of the contact author be indicated.
It would be a good idea to register your paper a few days before you submit it, so that you will have plenty of time for the acknowledgement to reach you. It might also be a good idea to submit an early version of your paper a few days before the deadline, so that you will encounter any potential difficulties as early as possible, and then send in the final version as a revision using the revise command (but remember that you are allowed only one revision). It would also be a good idea to test the printability of the postscript your text formatter is generating by sending a test print command to the server containing the postscript file in the message body. See the section on Server Commands for a detailed description of these commands.
Please be patient and wait at least several hours for the acknowledgement of your last request before repeating any action with the server (or sending mail to wdag96-help@cs.unibo.it). As specialists in distributed systems, we all know that network delays can be significant at times. Email is rather reliable and will try delivery for up to 3 days before giving up. This is yet another good reason why you should not wait until the last minute for submitting.
You can confirm the success of your submission with the status command. If for some reason email submission should fail, either send mail to wdag96-help@cs.unibo.it or consider submitting a hardcopy.
Case is not significant in commands to the server. The commands available are: register, submit, revise, withdraw, status, test register, test print, help.
Inform the server that you plan to submit a paper. The body of the message should be
authors: <list of authors separated by "and"> title: <title of paper> contact: <email address of contact author>The server will return a name to use to refer to your submission (called the filename in the definitions below).
Example registration:
% mail wdag96-submit@cs.unibo.it
Subject: register
authors: Wayne Surfer and Joe Pallido
title: Reliable Communication without Messages
contact: surfer@cs.university.edu
^D
Example response from the server:
From: wdag96-response@cs.unibo.it
To: surfer@cs.university.edu
Subject: WDAG96: Submission registered
Use the key 'surfer-9999.ps' for your submission to WDAG96 with
author(s): Wayne Surfer and Joe Pallido
title: Reliable Communication without Messages
contact: surfer@cs.university.edu
Submit a paper using the filename returned in the registration acknowledgement. The body of the message should be the postscript file. The server will acknowledge the submission. The acknowledgement will include the size, checksum, the results of a quick check of the postscript file's validity, and the first and last ten lines of the file.
Example submission: % mail wdag96-submit@cs.unibo.it Subject: submit surfer-9999.ps ~r wdag-paper.ps ^D Example response from the server: From: wdag96-response@cs.unibo.it To: surfer@cs.university.edu Subject: WDAG96: Submission received Submission 'surfer-9999.ps' received. INFORMATION FROM THE POSTSCRIPT(TM) FILE TESTING PROCESS Your file was tested on Thu Oct 26 19:17:00 MET 1995. It is 224926 bytes long. Its checksum (calculated by /usr/bin/sum) is 31857. Your postscript file does not seem to generate any errors. The first ten lines of your file are: ... The last ten lines of your file are: ...
Revise a previously submitted paper. The body of the message should be the postscript file. The server will confirm this revision with the contact person for the paper. At most one revision is allowed, and the revision must be received before the submission deadline (April 28, 1996).
Example revision: % mail wdag96-submit@cs.unibo.it Subject: revise surfer-9999.ps ~r wdag-paper.ps ^D Example response from the server: From: wdag96-response@cs.unibo.it To: surfer@cs.university.edu Subject: WDAG96: Revision Your submission with key 'surfer-9999.ps' was revised at the request of surfer@cs.university.edu. Please send mail as soon as possible to <wdag96-help@cs.unibo.it> if this is in error. INFORMATION FROM THE POSTSCRIPT(TM) FILE TESTING PROCESS Your file was tested on Thu Oct 26 19:17:00 MET 1995. It is 224926 bytes long. Its checksum (calculated by /usr/bin/sum) is 31857. Your PostScript(tm) file does not seem to generate any errors. The first ten lines of your file are: ... The last ten lines of your file are: ...
Withdraw a previously submitted paper. The server will confirm this withdrawal with the contact person for the paper.
Example withdrawal: % mail wdag96-submit@cs.unibo.it Subject: withdraw surfer-9999.ps ^D Example response from the server: From: wdag96-response@cs.unibo.it To: surfer@cs.university.edu Subject: WDAG96: Submission Withdrawn Your submission with key 'surfer-9999.ps' was withdrawn at the request of surfer@cs.university.edu. Please send mail as soon as possible to <wdag96-help@cs.unibo.it> if this is in error.
Check on the status of a submitted file. This status refers only to its existence and printability, not to its status in the refereeing process.
Example status check:
% mail wdag96-submit@cs.unibo.it
Subject: status surfer-9999.ps
^D
Example response from the server:
From: wdag96-response@cs.unibo.it
To: surfer@cs.university.edu
Subject: WDAG96: Status of 'surfer-9999.ps'
The following is our database entry for 'surfer-9999.ps'
authors: Wayne Surfer and Joe Pallido
title: Reliable Communication without Messages
contact: surfer@cs.university.edu
status: revised
Verifying your file ...
INFORMATION FROM THE POSTSCRIPT(TM) FILE TESTING PROCESS
Your file was tested on Thu Oct 26 19:17:00 MET 1995.
It is 224926 bytes long.
Its checksum (calculated by /usr/bin/sum) is 31857.
Your PostScript(tm) file does not seem to generate any errors.
The first ten lines of your file are:
...
The last ten lines of your file are:
...
Identical to the register command, except that the server returns a special filename to use for testing. The purpose of this command is to let you experiment with the submission process before submitting your paper for real.
Example test registration:
% mail wdag96-submit@cs.unibo.it
Subject: test register
authors: Wayne Surfer and Joe Pallido
title: Reliable Communication without Messages
contact: surfer@cs.university.edu
^D
Example response from the server:
From: wdag96-response@cs.unibo.it
To: surfer@cs.university.edu
Subject: WDAG96: Test submission registered
Use the key 'test-surfer-9999.ps' for your sample submission to WDAG96 with
author(s): Wayne Surfer and Joe Pallido
title: Reliable Communication without Messages
contact: surfer@cs.university.edu
Test printing of the postscript file contained in the body of the message. The server will return a message regarding the success or failure of the printing process.
Example test printing: % mail wdag96-submit@cs.unibo.it Subject: test print ~r wdag-paper.ps ^D Example response from the server: From: wdag96-response@cs.unibo.it To: surfer@cs.university.edu Subject: WDAG96: Printing test INFORMATION FROM THE POSTSCRIPT(TM) FILE TESTING PROCESS Your file was tested on Thu Oct 26 19:17:00 MET 1995. It is 224926 bytes long. Its checksum (calculated by /usr/bin/sum) is 31857. Your PostScript(tm) file does not seem to generate any errors. The first ten lines of your file are: ... The last ten lines of your file are: ...
Get help on the electronic submission process (this is the default command).
Example request for help: % mail wdag96-submit@cs.unibo.it Subject: help ^D
Ozalp Babaoglu Keith Marzullo Dept. of Computer Science Dept. of Computer Science & Engineering 0114 University of Bologna University of California, San Diego Piazza Porta S. Donato, 5 9500 Gilman Drive 40127 Bologna La Jolla, CA 92093-0114 Italy USAso that they are received by April 28, 1996, or sent by airmail and postmarked before April 19, 1996.