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In this paper, we explain how we transcribed (are/will be
transcribing) our mathematical theses into a printed format using
LaTeX
, and
a so-called style file in which we incorporated much of what the
Grad School requires in terms of preliminary pages, numbering and
general formatting. We have tried to design the output according to
the Grad School's Typing Guidelines, consulted with them on several
occasions, but we cannot guarantee that they won't have any objections
to the form of your thesis.
We will show how to use this style file, called umthesis.sty to typeset your dissertation by going step-by-step through a simple example. Once the essentials are explained, we will present an example that discusses more advanced features of our style file, and that demonstrates what we consider to be a good way of organizing a large document into little pieces so as to enable easy editing, proofreading, and even major revisions. We suggest that you keep those files as a template for your own thesis.
We had to make a number of choices which may not be exactly what you had in mind for your dissertation. Some of it could -no doubt- be done differently. Our guiding principle was to make the package be as complete and easy to use as possible, while keeping very close to standard LaTeX. We wanted to reduce the task of typesetting your dissertation as much as possible to a ``mere'' typing task.
The sequel assumes that you have read through the ``Local Guide'' [6], and have a reasonable knowledge of chapters 1-4 of the LaTeXmanual by Leslie Lamport [5] or ``LaTeX for Everyone'' [2]. Both are quite easy to read, and are available for short-term loan from the RCF -- simply sign one out from room 1537. Personally, I would recommend you write one chapter of your document in plain report style before reading any further. In that case, conversion to the umthesis.sty style should then be an easy task.
This document itself was prepared using the umthesis.sty style file and is part of the set of example files. As you note mistakes or new policies or any other incidental, please contact one of the authors (Volker Ecke) or the current LaTeX-pert (staff may know who).
Let us briefly recall what elements you need according to the ``Typing Guidelines for Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations'' [1] which you have received from the Grad School. It requires
The body of the dissertation should be typeset one-sided double spaced with chapter headings all capitalized (a point of disagreement between us and the Grad School). Finally, let me point out that your dissertation title should not contain any math symbols.
All of this can be done in standard TeXor LaTeX, and has been incorporated into the umthesis.sty style file, which is a modification of LaTeX' standard report style. It also contains a re-definition of the table of contents, the figure environment and the lists of figures/tables, since the LaTeX standards don't conform to the Grad School's requirements. If you use figures or tables in your thesis, you must include a List of Figures/Tables which can be done quite easily if you use umthesis.sty.
To see how/ exactly all of this is done, we have prepared a brief example dissertation, and will lead you step-by-step through the crucial parts.
You should enter the command ``get-umthesis-example'' to create a
directory containing the example dissertation in your own account. It
will be called umthesis-example and contain the following files:
The file umthesis.sty uses TeXcommands to redefine some LaTeXmacros. We have tried to provide some comments for the curious experimenter. In the sequel, however, we will only be concerned with how to use/ this file, not with how this is accomplished.
As our cunning naming scheme suggests, the 'chapter' files and bibliography.tex contain someone's actual (LaTeX) thesis; commands.tex defines new commands, personal abbreviations and additional fonts; title.tex appears to be concerned with preliminary pages, using a host of commands from umthesis.sty (moreover introducing us to Arthur, the author); and--finally--a file termed thesis.tex which appears to contain mostly gibberish.
Since importance and understandability are known to be inversely proportional to each other, our detailed examination will proceed in reverse order.
If you are preparing a large document such as a dissertation, it is clearly advisable to split it up into smaller pieces, say chapters. Using the LaTeXcommands and allows you to process one portion of the document at a time, taking into account the numbering in, and cross-referencing to other portions of your document. This is nicely described in chapter 8 of ``LaTeXfor Everyone'' [2].
In this spirit, we have put the title page, the chapters and the bibliography into separate files, and have one master file, thesis.tex, control what is being processed. Here is what is looks like:
timinput\{thesis.tex\} \end\{smll\}
So what do we have:
., andSince the specific designs of proofs, propositions, lemmata and corollaries and the conventions to number them are a highly personal matter, I have not included their definitions in umthesis.sty, but transparently defined some standard versions in commands.tex: theorem, assertion, proposition, lemma, definition, claim, corollary, remark, condition, example and proof. In addition, I have included some fairly simple examples that may be helpful in making even major changes. If you want to define some ``theorem-like'' environment, you need to give it a name not contained in the above list. Of course, you can remove the corresponding entries in commands.tex or give them a different name (e.g. your own 'proposition' environment could be called prp).
The reason for this
strange naming scheme is ``unique file completion'': the first
letter of the file name uniquely identifies the file, so that the
ESC key in UNIX and the TAB key in Emacs will complete the
full name after just typing the first letter.You see, if you discard all the comments, it's just two hands full of commands, most of them pure LaTeX. These let you control whether you want to process your entire thesis, or only a single chapter. So far, we have not seen much of umthesis.sty, except that it is being loaded.
The area where the umthesis.sty style file exerts most of its power--and which is, hence, full with of cryptic commands--is the file responsible for the required preliminary pages: title.tex.
First, let's take a look at title.tex:
timinput\{title.tex\} \end\{smll\}
As you can see, it begins with a long list of definitions that give LaTeXall the information it needs to produce the first three preliminary pages: the title page, the copyright page and the signature page. The command to actually do this is which makes sure these pages have the right format, do not have page numbers, are not listed in the table of contents, but are counted silently, etc.
If you want to dedicate your thesis to someone, you may use \{Dedication\} . If you do not want the title ``Dedication'', replace it by a tilde ( ). You can change font types, sizes, styles in the dedication text as you please.
The next two pages, Acknowledgments and Abstract, should get page numbers and be listed in the table of contents. \{Title\} provides exactly that, with ``Title'' as the headline of that page.
The ``Abstract'' page shows a way to get something fairly close to what the Grad School asks for in their sample.
Finally, takes care of the table of contents, and the lists of figures/tables (if or were not defined in thesis.tex).
Recall that in order to get cross-references and page numbers in the table of contents right, you may have to run LaTeXtwice (even three times in unfortunate circumstances).
The Body: 1-chapter.tex, 2-chapter.tex, bibliography.tex
The main part of the thesis is then fairly straightforward LaTeX. I would like to draw your attention to a number of potential pitfalls I noticed:
) . The latter is fragile: you
get very stange error messages, and the corresponding entry in the
Table of Contents, say, will be gobbled up.
[T.O.C. TITLE]\{EXPLICIT CHAPTER TITLE\} ...
Note that the Grad School explicitly requires these two to be the
same, but it may be necessary to add some extra space to the
TOC entry (using the TeXcommand \{ \} ) for
perfection.
in that is does a lot automatically in a fairly intelligent way. I
very strongly suggest that you do use LaTeX' referencing
facilities in their unmodified form, i.e. use ,
and , and . The time learning
about those is well-spent.
For completeness, but with hesitation did I decide to provide some information about the inner workings of LaTeX' referencing system, and how to make it go your way. This hesitation finds its expression in the tiny font size.
LaTeXautomatically associates counters to environments--even user-defined ones--and deduces from the structure of the number when to increase it, and when to reset it to zero. To give an example using equations: The counter associated to the \{equation\} -- \{equation\} environment is called . If I define \{arabic\{chapter\}.arabic\{equation\}\}, which means I want (6.4) for the above equation, then this tells LaTeX to increase the counter whenever another equation needs to be labeled, and/ to reset the counter to zero at the beginning of a new chapter. In effect, I told LaTeXthat I want to number by chapter. Conversely, requesting (4) would tell LaTeXimmediately that you want to label equations consecutively throughout the document. See Lamport C.7.3 for a more concise outline. Of course, you can take things into your own hands, by defining \{arabic\{equation\}\}, which makes labels like (4) and re-set the counter at the beginning of every chapter ``by hand'': \{equation\}\{0\}. Again, I do recommend that you relegate such issues to the final stages of your dissertation typing project.
Note that LaTeX2e provides a command called \{equation\}\{chapter\} to handle these questions.
Note that while you're working on your thesis, you may prefer single spacing to double spacing. In general, spacing of a document is controlled by
where x=1 in single-spacing and (around) x=1.7 is double-spaced.
The umthesis.sty style file let's you switch easily between single and double spacing mode within one and the same document:
For information on viewing, printing, including pictures please be referred to the ``LaTeXLocal-Guide'' [6].
The thebibliography environment has been redefined to match the Grad School's format requirements, while maintaining all functionality of described in the LaTeXbooks.
timinput\{commnds.tex\}
SOURCE FROM THE EXAMPLE THESIS
Source of Chapter One
Source of Chapter Two
Source of Chapter Two
Source of the Bibliography
Source of the Bibliography
References
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