Sample L^aT_eX Thesis Template

Note

MUN's School of Graduate Studies now has a L^aT_eX template and manual. You can download them from the SGS Templates page.

The School of Graduate Studies no longer offers thesis templates and manuals.

Introduction

This page describes how to use the L^aT_eX metathesis template which can be used as a basis for your thesis. All the formatting, page numbering, margins, sections, etc. aim to be consistent with the Guidelines for Theses and Reports from the School of Graduate Studies. All the relevant formatting/style attributes and macros are located in the thesis.sty file. The L^aT_eX macros in this file are not very sophisticated — feel free to make or suggest improvements.

Learning L^aT_eX can take a little time and patience. A good reference is L^aT_eX: A Document Preparation System, by Leslie Lamport available at Chapters Indigo or Amazon. See the Resources section at the bottom of this page for more helpful sites regarding L^aT_eX

Installation

After downloading the metathesis.zip file, you can decompress it by using the unzip program on a Linux command line as follows:

$ unzip metathesis.zip

(Note that Linux is available on all machines running LabNet, such as the machines in The Commons.) This command will create a directory called metathesis-v2.0. (Feel free to rename the directory.) When you change into this directory, you will find all the necessary boiler-plate .tex .bib, .sty files and a Makefile which can be used to create your thesis. Some sample .eps files are also present in the figures subdirectory. You should remove them after you've put your own figures there.

Hopefully the intended contents of each of the .tex files files is obvious and they can be modified using any text editor. Most of the content currently in these files is just place holder text — replace it with your own content. You should first make appropriate modifications to the thesis.tex file (e.g. thesis title, your name, degree, date, etc.). The ref.bib file contains the bibliography (see Lamport's book for more information). You shouldn't have to modify the thesis.sty file and you should have to modify the Makefile file only when adding or deleting .tex files or figures. If you have any questions or if you notice any discrepancies between layout of the thesis and the requirements of the SGS, then please let me know.

Usage

After adding your content to the appropriate files you can build your thesis on Linux by using the command line:

$ make

If there are no errors, then a .dvi file will be created which can be previewed with the xdvi program. If there are any errors, type 'X' and Enter to exit from L^aT_eX, make the appropriate changes and then re-run make.

PostScript

To generate a PostScript copy of your thesis, use the following command:

$ make thesis.ps

The resulting PostScript file can be printed using lpr or previewed with the ghostview, ggv or evince viewers.

PDF

To generate a PDF copy of your thesis, use the following command:

$ make thesis.pdf

PDF/A

To generate a PDF/A-1b copy of your thesis, use the following command:

$ make ethesis.pdf

This file should satisfy SGS's ethesis submission requirements.

Cleaning up

To get rid of all the auxiliary files generated by L^aT_eX (including the .dvi, .ps and .pdf files), use:

$ make clean

This will not remove your .tex files. Alternatively, to remove all the intermediate files, but leave the .dvi, .ps and .pdf files intact, use:

$ make neat

Sample Output

Below are the pages of the thesis template and filler content. Click on a page thumbnail to see a larger picture. Note that these are low quality PNG files that are for demonstration/preview purposes only and are not intended to be printed. The actual PostScript and PDF files created using the above instructions are of much better quality, especially for printing.

Common Problems

If you are using pdflatex to generate your pdf file directly, then figures may not appear in the resulting file. To fix this problem, modify the thesis.tex and thesis.sty files as follows:

In thesis.tex change:

        \documentclass[dvips,letterpaper,12pt]{report}

to:

        \documentclass[letterpaper,12pt]{report}

In thesis.sty change

        \usepackage[dvips]{graphicx}

to:

        \usepackage{graphicx}

Graphical L^aT_eX Editors

Instead of using the Makefile above, you may find the following graphical environments easier to use on Linux:

• Texmaker: a free, cross platform editor for L^aT_eX documents that's currently installed on the Computer Science machines in /usr/bin/texmaker.
• Kile: an integrated L^aT_eX environment for the KDE Desktop. This is installed on the Computer Science machines in /usr/bin/kile.
• Lyx. Another free processor for L^aT_eX documents. The installed executable is /usr/bin/lyx.

Installing L^aT_eX on Your Own Computer

Linux

L^aT_eX is available on most Linux distributions via their respective package managers (e.g. synaptic, rpm, yum, apt-get, emerge, etc....) and should be relatively easy to install on your own machine if you are running Linux. If you're using Ubuntu, for example, check out the LaTeX - Community Ubuntu Documentation

Other Operating Systems

If you are using an alternative operating system, there are several sites that contain software and information to help you install L^aT_eX on you own machine. Unlike commerical word processing software, a lot of L^aT_eX-related software can be legally downloaded and redistributed for free. If you choose to install L^aT_eX on your own machine, then the Makefile in the metathesis.zip file mentioned above may not be useful to you, but the the rest of the files should still be helpful. Sites with software/documentation/links for using L^aT_eX on your own Mac or Windows PC are given below. (I personally haven't used L^aT_eX recently on either of these platforms.) You should be able to find more software by using your preferred search engine.

Windows

• MiKTeX Project Page
• Setting up LaTeX for Microsoft Windows

Mac OS X

• MacTeX (After installing, you may need to edit the metathesis Makefile to reference /usr/texbin/ instead of /usr/bin/ — recommended by Jamie Goodyear.)
• TeX on Mac OS X
• TeXShop

L^aT_eX Resources

Other helpful sites, documents and programs:

• The LaTeX Project home page
• [PDF] LaTeX Tutorials: A PRIMER (Indian TeX Users Group)
• [PDF] LaTeX for Computer Scientists
• [PDF] The Not So Short Guide to Latex
• Beginning LaTeX (Cornell University)
• LaTeX (Wikibooks)
• Getting to grips with LaTeX
• Getting Started with TeX, LaTeX, and Friends
• Help on LaTeX Commands (reference)
• Detexify2 - LaTeX symbol classifier
• Tools and Tips for Writing Papers
• The Art of Problem Solving: About LaTeX
• TeX/LaTeX information from University of Colorado
• General LaTeX tips and tricks
• Text Processing using LaTeX (Cambridge University Engineering Department)
• LaTeX Your Thesis (Reed College)
• The Beauty of LaTeX
• Art of Problem Solving: LaTeX
• LaTeX overview
• BibTeX and bibliography styles
• A Quick and Dirty Guide to LaTeX
• LaTeX to PDF
• A Summary of BibTeX
• BibTeX and bibliography styles
• Correctly specifying author names in BibTeX
• Using RefWorks with LaTeX/BibTeX FAQ
• Dissertation and LaTeX Resources Page

"L^aT_eX" CSS style from The Beauty of LaTeX web page by Dario Taraborelli.