Writing a Master's Thesis in LaTeX

LaTeX is a typesetting system commonly used when creating scientific and mathematical documents due to its powerful handling of mathematics and references. If this is your first contact with LaTeX, realize that it is not a "What You See Is What You Get" word processor like Ms Word, FrameMaker, or OpenOffice. At first LaTeX may seem more difficult to use, however after using LaTeX for a short while you will quickly learn to love the straightforward way mathematics, references, and large documents are handled. You will also note how much better, especially mathematics, look. We provide some files and tools to help you get past the first stage of awkwardness and if that is not enough have a look at the references listed at the bottom of this page.

Prerequisite

To typeset the thesis in LaTeX you need the following two components:

1. A text editor (use your favorite). Some different alternatives are:
   • (X)emacs in combination with AUCTeX (the editor of choice for most people at the Automatic Control group)
   • TeXnicCenter
   • WinEdt (Shareware for Windows.)
2. An up and running LaTeX installation to do the actual typesetting. In Linux and UNIX the excellent tetex is often included in the standard installation. In Windows downloading and installing MikTeX is a good choice. All computer labs at ISY have LaTeX installed.

The liutheis Document Class

To help you getting started and to produce a good looking thesis without having to spend too much time to learn LaTeX we provide a thesis class and a short thesis example. The class, called liuthesis, provides a suitable thesis layout, a proper title page and library page, etc in a very easy way. The liuthesis class comes with a quite extensive manual. To further help you getting started the thesis template illustrates how to use these features, as well as how to include references.

Download the archive with the files you need: liuthesis
1. Check out the documentation in the Doc subdirectory. To recompile the example thesis you need a copy of the files in the Run in the Doc directory.
2. Copy the files in the Run subdirectory to the directory where you plan to keep your thesis. And start writing your thesis.

If you run into problems that you cannot solve, your supervisor at the university should be able to help you out. If you find bugs, or see something that should be modified in the files, please contact your supervisor.

Further Information

• The Not So Short Introduction to LaTeX - A very good introduction and source of information about LaTeX.
• TeX Frequently Asked Questions
• The LaTeX Companion (2 ed) by F. Mittelbach, M. Goossens, et al. Addison-Wesley, 2004. (This is a very good book on LaTeX, you should be able to borrow it at the university library.)