General talk about software patterns

[Christian Köppe <christian.koppe AT hu.nl>]

Hi all,

I want to start to collect patterns of a certain domain and (try to) combine then into a pattern language. Quite a few of the patterns of this language are already described, others aren't. Some of the already describe patterns do however not always completely fit into the scope of the language, some are too general and some are too specific. And there are also some patterns where the descriptions could be improved in certain aspects (missing forces, consequences etc.).

I wonder if there is someone who has done something like this before and what their approach was. Beside things like categorization issues is the biggest issue: how to handle the already described patterns? I don't want to just rewrite them, but then slightly different. But I also cannot include them in the language as they are, because then they'll miss some important aspects or do not fit scopewise. What I actually would like to do is somehow extending or adapting them, so that they fit into the language (BTW: the language is intended to cover the design of group lectures).

Any suggestions or pointers to literature discussing this issue are highly welcome. I hope my question is clear, otherwise I'll try to explain it in more detail.

Thanks a lot,
Christian Köppe