Frontmatter

Abstract

The success of the humankind relies on our ability to communicate and
transform the world. For ages we developed tools and technologies that
allowed us to thrive and prosper. As we expanded to every corner of
the planet we created languages that enabled us to communicate and
record knowledge, even if they also become barriers to communication
in themselves.

Technology and language have always been interconnected. Technologies
to record language gave birth to history and the written language
allowed us to preserve knowledge, including knowledge on
technologies. Technology reshaped language as books, radio shows or
motion pictures made us aware of how other people communicate. But
technologies and language were not completely blend together until
computers and networks become our favourite tool to communicate and
transform the world.

The goal of the Symposium on Languages, Applications and Technologies
(SLATE) is to be a forum to discuss the different ways in which
language and technology interplay in computer science, and they are
many.  The symposium is divided into three main tracks, each one
focusing a specific aspect of languages, from natural languages to
compilers.

* The HHL (Human-Human Languages) track is dedicated to the
  discussion of research projects and ideas involving natural language
  processing and their industrial application.

* The HCL (Human-Computer Languages) track is where researchers,
  developers and educators exchange ideas and information on the
  latest academic or industrial work on language design, processing,
  assessment and applications.

* The CCL (Computer-Computer Languages) track main goal is to
  provide a broad space for discussion about the XML markup language,
  examples of usage and associated technologies.

SLATE follows the footsteps of two former conferences: CoRTA, the
Conference on Compilers, Related Technologies and Applications; and
XATA, the conference on XML, Applications and Applied Technologies,
both with more than a decade of history.

This volume contains the proceedings of the 2nd edition of SLATE, held
in the Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Sciences, University
of Porto, Portugal, during June 20-21, 2013.

This year, SLATE received a total of 26 paper submissions for the
three tracks. Each submission was reviewed by at least three Program
Committee members, which included 55 researchers (counting
sub-reviewers). At the end, 19 papers were selected for publication
and presentation at the symposium, resulting in a 27% rejection
rate. The set of accepted papers present a variety of contributions
and were divided into the following five sessions for presentation at
the symposium:

* Software Development Tools, includes four articles on
  programming languages compilation and analysis;

* XML and Applications, includes four articles on the
  usage of XML in different areas, ranging from the annotation of
  documents to its use on the semantic web;

* Languages on Learning Environments, includes three
  articles that focus the automation on exercises generation and
  evaluation;

* Domain Specific Languages, includes four articles on
  languages for specific languages, from music, robots or graphical
  user interfaces;

* Natural Language Processing, includes four articles
  related to processing and teaching natural languages.

In addition to these sessions, the program also included two keynote
presentations, one on the PICAT system, a scalable logic-based
language, by Neng-Fa Zhou (Brooklyn College, New York), and another on
software languages and their history, by Jean-Marie Favre (University
of Grenoble, France).

The organizers of SLATE 2013 are in debt to many people without whom
this event would never been possible.  We wish to thank to our
sponsors for making this event possible and to the EasyChair
conference management system for simplifying our task.  Thanks must go
also to the authors of all submitted papers for their contribution and
interest in the symposium and to the participants for making the event
a meeting point for a fruitful exchange of ideas and feedback on
recent developments. Finally, we want to express our gratitude to the
Program Committee members and sub-reviewers, as the symposium would
not have been possible without their dedicated time and knowledge in
evaluating and ranking so many submissions from so many different
topics.

To all, our deepest thanks!