PREPARING UTEP THESES WITH LATEX Luc Longpré Mar-05-2008 =============================================================================== Modified since from the 2005 version: - The name of Dean of Graduate school can be assigned in the main file - Optional copyright page - Can put a degree after the author's name on the title page - The statement "This thesis was typed by the author" is no longer required in the vitae page - Increased margins by .05 inches (gives a .05in room for measurement error) - If you have figures or tables, look at examples in chapter 7 ( this is unchanged from 2005) =============================================================================== Apr-14-2005 =============================================================================== WHY USE LATEX? LaTeX is a Document Preparation System, designed to produce a high-quality typesetting, especially for scientific text. Many of our students initially plan to use Microsoft Word to typeset their thesis. Basic operations of Microsoft Word are simple to learn, and what you see on the screen is what (usually) gets printed. You can easily include graphics and modify the format to suit your purpose. However, there are several drawbacks in using Word. It takes a lot of work to make formulae look right, and the work needs to be repeated for each formula. In Word, many things are done automatically, and when these things are not what you want, it is often not clear how to fix the problem. Also, sometimes Word will change things in your file and often you don't notice what has happened. LaTeX, in contrast, does typesetting. So, you edit your source file, and then LaTeX typesets the source file. You can then print the typeset document or look at it with a document viewer. There are several advantages in using LaTeX for typesetting your thesis. First of all, it is quite easy to include formulae in a document. More importantly, the source file contains logical design, not typeset material. For example, quotes are typed between a \begin{quote} and a \end{quote}. This means all quotes will be formatted the same way, the way the quote environment has been defined. Formatting for these environments has been designed by trained typographists. Using these predefined environments keep the authors from producing an aesthetically pleasing but poorly designed document. But if you somewhat need to modify how quotes are displayed, you can modify how quote environments are displayed. Here again, just one modification changes the appearance of all quotes. You don't have to search and modify every occurrence in your document. In any case, when you write your documents, you should be concerned with content and logical structure, not with appearance. For more on this topic, look at page 7 of Lamport's LaTeX book (see below for reference). Lastly, most conferences require .pdf files for the submissions and provide formatting files for submitted papers. Often it is difficult to have the .pdf file generated from a Word document meet the formatting requirement of the conference. =============================================================================== BIBTEX BibTeX is a separate program that extracts references from a database and includes it in the LaTeX output document. You create a database that specifies author, title, year, journal and so on, for each citation, using a normal text editor. Context aware editors like WinEdt and WinEmacs makes this process easier. When the text is processed, LaTeX collects the citations, BibTeX extracts from the appropriate data from the database and automatically generates the bibliography. =============================================================================== INSTALLATION OF LaTeX on WINDOWS PC Many of our students enjoy using WinEdt, which you can find at www.winedt.com. WinEdt is a powerful editor with a strong predisposition towards the creation of LaTeX documents. A student license is $30 and it's $40 for educational purpose. There is a free trial period. As for me, I more or less followed the instructions from //http://www.math.aau.dk/~dethlef/Tips/introduction.html to install WinEmacs and MiKTeX. Although I skipped the `prepare' instructions, it seems to work fine. Below are some details. For LaTeX, I use MiKTeX, which is a TeX implementation for the Windows operating system. I installed version 2.4. The Web site address is http://www.miktex.org Originally, I installed WinEmacs version 21.3, a GNU Project software. Now, computers in the department have a newer version. You can find a full binary version at the address: http://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/emacs/windows/ First look at the README file in that directory. I also had to install AUCTeX, a package that extends emacs with several macros for when emacs is used for LaTeX. =============================================================================== HISTORY Karen Villaverde wrote her computer science master's thesis in 1993 using LaTeX. She gracefully allowed us to use her thesis as an example. In 1996, Yulia Kahl and Patrick Kahl both used her thesis as a base for their own respective theses, which they in turn provided as examples. Their files were used as templates by many of our students. Soon after this, LaTeX 2e came out. Transition to LaTeX 2e was slow, perhaps because of backward compatibility. Some of our students have undoubtedly upgraded and made various improvements over the years, passing the files to each other. I prepared this version so our students don't have to worry too much about the format of their thesis, and spend more time on creative contents. The thesis in these files is Patrick Kahl's thesis, modified to meet the current Graduate School requirements and to make it simpler to use by our students. I added an extra 7th chapter to illustrate tables, figures, and the inclusion of a .pdf file. I also created a BibTeX file for the references, in case you would like to use this tool. But mainly, I have moved as many formatting command into the package and created a number of macros, to hide most of the gritty details. =============================================================================== GENERAL INFORMATION AND INSTRUCTIONS ------------------------------------ The zip file containing source files can be found at http://www.cs.utep.edu/grad/Thesis_LaTex.html. Follow the link for the LaTeX source files. `thesis.tex' is the main file. It calls all other files. Create your own thesis by editing/creating the following LaTeX files: thesis.tex This is where you comment in or out the various optional sections. You also put in your title, name, committee members, etc. * preface.tex * acknowl.tex * abstract.tex chapter1.tex . : chapter-.tex ref.tex or refs.bib If you use BibTeX * glossary.tex * appendixA.tex . : * appendix-.tex vitae.tex NOTE: All files preceded by an asterisk (`*') are optional. If any don't exist they will be ignored during compilation. The table of contents, list of tables and list of figures are all generated automatically. You probably need to edit `thesis.tex' for the correct number of chapters, etc. As you create new files, be sure to uncomment the `\include{file.tex}' for the appropriate file. If there are files that you don't use, comment the same include line. Comment `\include{listoffigures}' and `\include{listoftables}' as necessary depending on whether you have figures or tables in your thesis. You comment by inserting a % at the beginning of the line. The simplest way to insert graphics is to create a .pdf file and include it as in the example in chapter 7. If you do this, you need to invoke pdflatex instead of just latex. Invoking pdflatex produces a .pdf file output. Invoking latex produces a .dvi output which can be viewed with the appropriate viewer. Another way to include graphics is to use `xfig' or any other package that produces .ps or .eps files. IMPORTANT: when printing the .pdf file from acrobat reader, in the Page Handling box, set Page scaling to "None" and uncheck the Auto-Rotate and the Choose paper boxes. To create a typeset document, you need to invoke LaTeX and/or BibTeX. If you don't use BibTeX and hardcode all your references, you need to invoke latex (or pdflatex) twice to get the references and table of contents right. If you use BibTeX, you need to invoke the programs in the following sequence: latex, bibtex, latex, latex (or pdflatex, bibtex, pdflatex, pdflatex). The first invocation generates the references for bibtex. Then bibtex extracts data from the database. The next two invocations of latex set the references right. If you don't add new citations and don't modify the database, then only the two latex invocations are necessary. =============================================================================== SPELL CHECKING LaTeX FILES -------------------------- You can check the spelling of your LaTeX files on UNIX by typing `ispell -t file.tex'. You can install ispell on your PC as well as described at the installation link mentioned above. I have not tried myself. The ispell program knows about LaTeX commands and only checks the actual text in the file. =============================================================================== REFERENCES ON LaTeX ------------------- 1. L. Lamport. LaTeX: A Document Preparation System. 2nd Ed. Addison-Wesley, 1994. 2. M. Goosen, F. Mittelbach and A. Samarin. The LaTeX companion. Addison-Wesley, 1994. 3. Guide to LaTeX, 4th Edition. Helmut Kopka & Patrick W. Daly. Addison-Wesley, 2004. =============================================================================== LIST OF FILES ------------- (The current thesis.tex uses all files with a *) .emacs if you need it for WinEmacs * abstract.tex LaTeX file containing Abstract text * acknowl.tex LaTeX file containing Acknowledgements text appendixA.tex LaTeX file containing an example Appendix A text (modify thesis.tex to include) * chapter1.tex LaTeX file containing Introductory Chapter text * chapter2.tex LaTeX file containing Chapter 2 text * chapter3.tex LaTeX file containing Chapter 3 text * chapter4.tex LaTeX file containing Chapter 4 text * chapter5.tex LaTeX file containing Chapter 5 text * chapter6.tex LaTeX file containing Chapter 6 text chapter7.tex LaTeX file containing an extra chapter with examples of tables, figure and .pdf graphics (modify thesis.tex to include) README this file * ref.tex LaTeX file containing the references refs.bib BibTeX file containing the references (modify thesis.tex to use BibTex instead of using refs.tex) * utepcsthesis.sty LaTeX package used for formatting the thesis thesis.tex LaTeX main file, where you put your title, committee members, etc. It has commands to include all thesis parts * vitae.tex LaTeX file containing Curriculum Vitae text =============================================================================== Bug reports to longpre@utep.edu