LaTeX Paper Conversion

Overview

This skill automates the tedious and recurring process of converting an academic paper written in LaTeX from one publisher's template to another. Different journals (e.g., Springer, MDPI, IEEE) have vastly different structural requirements, document classes, margin settings, and bibliography styles. This skill streamlines these conversions by executing a structured multi-stage workflow, extracting content, mapping it to a new template, and resolving common compilation errors.

When to Use This Skill

• Use when the user requests to port an existing LaTeX paper to a new journal's format.
• Use when the user provides an existing .tex file and a new template directory.
• Use when the user mentions converting from format A (e.g., IPOL/Neural Processing) to format B (e.g., MDPI).

How It Works

Step 1: Pre-requisites & Assessment

Identify the Source LaTeX file and asking the user for the Target Template Directory. Understand the core layout mapping (single-column vs. double-column, bibliography style).

Step 2: Extraction & Injection Script Generation

Create a Python script (e.g., convert_format.py) to parse the source LaTeX file. Use reviewed boundary-aware extraction; regular expressions alone do not safely parse arbitrary nested TeX. Preserve comments, macros, included files, labels, citations and author metadata, then compare the extracted body with the source. Merge the new template's preamble, the extracted body, and the backmatter. Write this to a new file in an output directory.