We investigate tameness of Toeplitz shifts. By introducing the notion of extended Bratteli–Vershik diagrams, we show that such shifts with finite Toeplitz rank are tame if and only if there are at most countably many orbits of singular fibres over the maximal equicontinuous factor. The ideas are illustrated using the class of substitution shifts. A body of elaborate examples shows that the assumptions of our results cannot be relaxed.

It is shown that the Ellis semigroup of a $\mathbb Z$ -action on a compact totally disconnected space is completely regular if and only if forward proximality coincides with forward asymptoticity and backward proximality coincides with backward asymptoticity. Furthermore, the Ellis semigroup of a $\mathbb Z$ - or $\mathbb R$ -action for which forward proximality and backward proximality are transitive relations is shown to have at most two left minimal ideals. Finally, the notion of near simplicity of the Ellis semigroup is introduced and related to the above.

We characterize equicontinuous Delone dynamical systems as those coming from Delone sets with strongly almost periodic Dirac combs. Within the class of systems with finite local complexity, the only equicontinuous systems are then shown to be the crystallographic ones. On the other hand, within the class without finite local complexity, we exhibit examples of equicontinuous minimal Delone dynamical systems that are not crystallographic. Our results solve the problem posed by Lagarias as to whether a Delone set whose Dirac comb is strongly almost periodic must be crystallographic.

We re-investigate the theory of deformations of tilings using P-equivariant cohomology. In particular, we relate the notion of asymptotically negligible shape functions introduced by Clark and Sadun to weakly P-equivariant forms. We then investigate more closely the relation between deformations of patterns and homeomorphism or topological conjugacy of pattern spaces.