This book collects the proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Developments in Language Theory (DLT 2004). The five invited papers indicate some dominant topics: the use of monadic second-order logic in the recognizability of sets of finite graphs, and in the study of communicating automata; related questions in parameterized complexity; and links between recombinant DNA processes, combinatorial group theory, and the further theory of surfaces. Among the 30 contributed papers, grammar systems play a major (but nonexclusive) part, both in classical and biological approaches. It is also worth mentioning the papers on P- (or membrane) systems and bio-operations.

The book does not include an overview of the covered matter, and the papers are classified according to the lexicographic order of the authors’ names. So, this work is similar to an issue of a specialized research journal, which mainly addresses the experts.