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			   CALL FOR PAPERS


               Special Issue of the Constraints Journal  
                                 on 

                          SOFT CONSTRAINTS

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In  the last  few years  much effort  has been  devoted to  extend the
classical  framework  of constraints  to  handle  many  kinds of  soft
features, like fuzziness, preferences, uncertainties, and costs.  Such
a   generalization   is   however   not  easy,   nor   computationally
inexpensive. For this reason,  new modelling, solving, and programming
environments have been defined, and their properties have been studied
and tested experimentally.

Moreover, two workshops  on soft constraints (at CP  1999 and CP 2000)
have fostered the discussion on  current issues and assessed the value
of these first efforts, pointing out some promising new directions for
research with soft constraints.

We therefore think it is of great value at this point to collect in an
archival   form  papers   that   address  several   aspects  of   soft
constraints. In particular, in this special issue we aim at collecting
high quality full papers that  show novel methods, ideas, and results,
which  advance  the state  of  the art  in  this  area.  We  encourage
submissions  of  papers  addressing,  in addition  to  other  relevant
issues, the following topics:

-- algorithms to solve classes of soft constraints;
-- constraint languages that can deal with soft constraints;
-- methods,  techniques,  and environments to model real-life problems 
as soft constraint problems;
-- applications of soft constraints.

SUBMISSIONS GUIDELINES

Papers should be submitted electronically  by sending a message to the
volume  editors  (see adresses  below)  to  declare  you intention  to
submit, including  in the message  the title, keywords,  abstract, and
full address of the contacting author.  You should also send a PS file
to both editors, produced according  to the information for authors of
the Constraints journal (http://www.wkap.nl/journalhome.htm/1383-7133).
The paper should be not longer than 20 pages.

For more information about the Constraints journal and Kluwer academic 
publishers see the URL http://www.wkap.nl/

IMPORTANT DATES

Intent to submit:  December 1, 2000
Submission: December 15, 2000
Notification to authors: March 30, 2001
Final version: May 30, 2001

GUEST EDITORS

Philippe Codognet
University of Paris 6 (LIP6), Paris, France
E-mail: Philippe.Codognet@lip6.fr

Francesca Rossi
University of Padova, Italy.
E-mail: frossi@math.unipd.it
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