Venue Fork

Venue Fork: Second-Venue Submission Variant

Fork a paper for a second venue while the original submission keeps living. A fork is a copy (both venues track independently), unlike retarget-journal (a move) and preprint (a non-archival variant that must NOT get a vault submission entry).

When to Use

• A venue window explicitly permits concurrent submission (e.g. WINE 2026 ⟷ FOCS/SAGT/AFT 2026)
• A rejected paper needs a reformatted version for a differently-formatted venue
• the user says "submit this also to X", "concurrent submission to X", "make the X version"

Phase 0 — CFP compliance sheet (blocks everything)

Fetch the official CFP (never WikiCFP alone; mark-unverified applies) and record:

Timing analysis (report to the user): if the source venue notifies before the target's rebuttal/notification, acceptance there forces withdrawal from the target before any reviews arrive — the fork is then insurance + comments-on-rejection, not guaranteed feedback. Say so explicitly before doing the work.

Phase 1 — Create the fork

1. New Overleaf project via Dropbox (the active client may create these — folder + main.tex = project): Apps/Overleaf/Paper {Theme} {Short Name} ({VENUE} {YY})/ — Title Case, venue suffix, per the existing naming convention. Resolve the Dropbox root per multi-machine.md.
2. Copy from the source project: main.tex, the bib, figure dirs, any .bst the target format needs. Never edit the source project's files — it is a live submission surface. Copy files by name only — never cp -r a whole template/source dir into the new Overleaf folder, which would drag a .git in and make it a repo on the wrong remote. Confirm find <new-overleaf-folder> -name .git is empty. See .claude/rules/template-scaffold-strip-git.md.
3. Project dir: mkdir <project>/paper-{venue}/ + relative symlink paper-{venue}/paper → ../../../../../Apps/Overleaf/<name> (absolute symlinks break cross-machine).

Phase 2 — Document-class conversion

Target submission formats like WINE's are satisfied by plain \documentclass[11pt,a4paper]{article}

• \usepackage[margin=1in]{geometry}. Conversion map:

• Grep the body first: grep -o '\\begin{[a-z]*}' main.tex | sort | uniq -c tells you exactly which theorem environments to define — the AFT paper needed none, the SAGT paper needed nine.
• cleveref: load hyperref then \usepackage[capitalise,noabbrev]{cleveref} when the body uses \cref/\Cref (LIPIcs loads it via class option).
• .bst files: plainurl.bst ships with TeX Live (urlbst); splncs04.bst must be copied into the fork. Check with kpsewhich <name>.bst before assuming.

Shared math core. A class conversion is a legitimate adoption window for user-math.sty (templates/venues/_shared/): copy it in, load it AFTER the new class, and delete the preamble's now-duplicate \newcommand{\E}-style lines — it supplies the macro set, operators, delimiters, and theorem environments clash-safely ([notheorems] when the kit owns them). Papers not being converted are NOT retrofitted (templates/venues/_shared/README.md; candidates: docs/reference/user-math-adoption-candidates.md).

Phase 3 — Page-budget refit (relocate, never cut)

1. Compile; find where the body ends: pdftotext -f N -l N main.pdf - per page around the expected boundary — locate the References header page.
2. Compute overrun against the CFP budget (mind what's excluded: title page/references usually don't count; an 18pp LNCS body ≈ 12–13pp at 11pt/1in — LNCS text block is ~40% smaller).
3. Relocate in this order until the body fits, adding \appendix sections with pointer lines (\noindent\emph{The proof appears in Appendix~\ref{...}.}):
   1. Detail subsections readers can defer (experimental-design grids, implementation details)
   2. Large floats (tables/figures) — \cref keeps resolving when labels move with the float
   3. Longest proofs → "Omitted Proofs" appendix, re-titled \begin{proof}[Proof of Theorem~\ref{...}]
   4. Whole peripheral sections (motivating applications, extended demarcation)
4. Never cut prose to fit — relocation only (manuscript-edit-budget rule). Update any in-text Section~\ref pointing at moved content to Appendix~\ref.

Phase 4 — QA gates (all must pass)

• latexmk -pdf exit 0; grep -c 'LaTeX Warning: Reference\|Warning: Citation' main.log → 0.
• Body-end page ≤ budget (re-run the Phase 3 boundary check — floats move on recompile).
• Anonymity grep on the tex: author surname, first name, all affiliated institutions, acknowledg, our prior, we showed, in earlier work. Then eyeball p1 of the PDF.
• Render-level check (compile logs cannot catch wrong-symbol output): pdftotext the PDF and grep for symbols that should/shouldn't appear — especially after any macro rename (see Gotchas).