soda-supplementary

name	soda-supplementary
description	Use when organizing the back matter of a SODA (ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms) submission — there is no supplementary channel, so appendix architecture inside the single no-page-limit PDF does the supplement's job; covers front/back matter split, appendix ordering, and external-archive references.

SODA Supplementary Material

SODA has no supplementary upload: no ZIP slot, no separate appendix deadline, no reviewer-optional attachments. One PDF on HotCRP, with no page limit, carries everything (2027 cycle, checked 2026-07-08 via the SIAM SODA27 submission page). So "supplementary material" at SODA is an internal layout question: how to architect a 40-80 page document so that a triaging PC member, a assigned referee, and a rebuttal-window author can each navigate it.

The two-tier document

Think of the submission as front matter (what every reader reads) and back matter (what the assigned referee verifies), with an explicit contract between them:

Tier	Typical span	Contents	Reader promise
Front	pages 1-10ish	Title-page abstract, result statements, technique overview, prior-bound comparison, proof roadmap	Self-contained: a PC member can judge significance without back matter
Back	the rest	Full proofs in dependency order, deferred cases, calculation appendices, computational-check descriptions	Complete: no step outsourced to "standard arguments" that are not

The contract fails in both directions: front matter that cannot be judged alone reads as disorganized; back matter that a referee cannot verify reads as wrong.

Appendix architecture rules

• Order by dependency, not by section of first mention. A referee verifies linearly; forward references inside proofs multiply their working memory.
• Restate before proving. Use thm-restate or manual restatements so each appendix proof begins with the exact claim, eliminating page-flipping:

\usepackage{thm-restate}
% Front matter:
\begin{restatable}{theorem}{maindet}\label{thm:main}
  There is a deterministic $O(m\log^3 n)$-time algorithm for ...
\end{restatable}
% Back matter:
\maindet*   % restates Theorem 1 verbatim, then the full proof follows
\begin{proof} ... \end{proof}

• One notation table, early. Long documents die by drifting notation; a table after the introduction, and a rule that appendices introduce no new symbols without it, keeps a 60-page argument navigable.
• Name the appendices by claim, not "Omitted Proofs": "Appendix C: Proof of the Lower Bound (Theorem 3)" lets the referee jump straight from the rebuttal ledger to the page.
• Case-heavy arguments get a case index: a small table listing each case, its page, and its one-line resolution.

What lives outside the PDF

Only material that cannot be prose belongs elsewhere, referenced from the paper:

• Machine-verification archives (certificates, checkers) at an anonymity-safe URL — see soda-artifact-evaluation for packaging and the anonymity rules.
• Implementation companions with benchmark data, if any — the paper cites them as color, and reviewers owe them nothing.
• The arXiv full version is not an external supplement at submission time: what you submit to HotCRP must itself be complete. Never write "see the full version" in a SODA submission — you are already submitting it.

Navigation aids for a long reviewed document

An uncapped PDF is read on screens, out of order, by people hunting specific claims during rebuttal season. Invest in navigability the way capped-venue authors invest in compression:

\usepackage[colorlinks=true,linkcolor=blue,citecolor=blue]{hyperref}
\usepackage[capitalize,nameinlink]{cleveref}   % "Lemma 4.2" links whole
% After the introduction:
\tableofcontents                                % legitimate in an uncapped venue
% In the appendix preamble, a claim index:
% Theorem 1  -> proved in Appendix B (p. 24)
% Theorem 2  -> proved in Appendix C (p. 31), uses Lemmas C.1-C.4
% Lemma 4.1  -> proved inline (p. 12)

• A table of contents is not decoration here — it is the referee's map, and its section titles should narrate the argument ("Bounding the recourse of the overlay"), not name genres ("Analysis, continued").
• The claim index (theorem → proof location) is the same artifact as the claims ledger in soda-reproducibility; generate both from one source.
• PDF bookmarks come free with hyperref; check they render, since some reviewers navigate exclusively through them.

Habits imported from capped venues that misfire here

Imported habit	Why it misfires at SODA
"Proof deferred to the supplementary material"	There is no supplement; the phrase signals template reuse from another venue
Squeezing to 12 pages and dropping proofs	Uncapped submission: dropped proofs read as gaps, not thrift
Separate anonymous ZIP with the appendix	No such upload exists; appendix rides in the PDF
Supplement written after the deadline	Nothing can be added after July; the PDF is the whole record
Appendix as a dumping ground of drafts	Referees read it; unpolished back matter damages the front matter's credibility

Pre-upload back-matter audit

1. Grep the PDF text for "full version," "supplementary," and "omitted" — each hit is either a broken promise or a leftover from another venue's template.
2. Verify every front-matter theorem has a back-matter proof and vice versa (no orphan lemmas proving nothing that is claimed).
3. Check the dependency order: no proof uses a lemma proved later without an explicit forward pointer.
4. Compile with links on (hyperref) and click every \ref in the appendix.
5. Confirm the whole document — appendices included — passes the anonymity sweep.

Output format

[Back-matter verdict] Navigable / Needs restructuring / Incomplete
[Contract check] <front matter self-contained? back matter complete?>
[Orphans] <claims without proofs; proofs without claims>
[Ordering] <dependency violations found>
[External references] <archives cited; anonymity-safe? necessary?>