Editorial on the Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science Electronic Notes in Theoretical Computer Science is intended to provide rapid, electronic publication of conference proceedings, lecture notes, thematic monographs, and similar publications of interest to the theoretical computer science community. ENTCS is published electronically through the facilities of Elsevier Science B.V. and under its auspices. The goal is to use the World Wide Web as a medium to provide more rapid publication and broader dissemination than print media normally allow. For example, with conference proceedings, the goal is to provide publication of the proceedings that is virtually contemporaneous with the occurrence of the conference. ENTCS is published in volumes, with each one composed either of a conference proceedings, a set of lecture notes, or a thematic monograph. Access to ENTCS archives is available at the URL http://www.elsevier.nl/locate/entcs The Table of Contents
and Abstracts
of each volume
is available
to anyone
on the Internet. In addition, at least through 1996, access to the complete archives is free for anyone whose home institution maintains a subscription to the journal Theoretical Computer Science. The archives are maintained by Elsevier, and CD-ROM disks of material published in ENTCS will be made available to the subscribeis of TCS as part of their subscriptions to TCS. The Managing Editors of the series are Michael Mislove (Tulane University), Maurice Nivat (University of Paris) and Christos Papadimitriou (University of California, San Diego). A complete list of the Editors of ENTCS is accessible through the URL for the series listed above. Guidelines for submissions to ENTCS also are available through that URL. We encourage Organizers and/or Program Chairs in the case of conferences to contact one of the editors about publishing their proceedings in L?NTCS. Authors of lecture notes and thematic monographs also are encouraged to contact us about publishing material in the series. MICHAEL