This volume contains mainly the revised versions of papers presented at the wo- shop '98, "Beyond the Notation," that took place in Mulhouse, France on June 3-4, 1998. We thank all those that have made this possible, and particularly all the people in Mulhouse that worked hard to make this meeting a success, with such a short delay between the announcement and the realization. We are specially grateful to Nathalie Gaertner, who put in a tremendous amount of effort in the initial preparation of the workshop. We were pleasantly surprised of the quality of the submitted material and of the level...