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Dissertations and Theses with LaTeX2e

contributed byKevin Kremeyer

In the not-so-distant past, Marcel Oliver (a local graduate student) wrote a nice LaTex2e dissertation style file that sets up a lot of the messy formatting details (margins, line spacing, etc, required by the Graduate College) for theses and dissertations written here at the U of A.
I myself used that format and accompanying documentation and finished my dissertation just a few months ago.

[ The dissertation style files can be found:

• on the math department Linux system under the directory /usr/local/share/texmf/tex/latex/uaclasses/
• here as a .zip file.
• here as a .tar file

After taking a look at the documentation, I'll walk you through a piece of my own dissertation as an example of how I used Marcel's format.

First let's start with the main file called swig_diss.tex to get a feel for how things are organized.

SPECIAL NOTE: Encapsulated postscript graphics worked better for me than regular postscript graphics. I had trouble scaling the regular postscript graphics.

The swig_diss.tex file uses the following individual files (kept in the same directory): abstract.tex, acknowledgements.tex, conc.tex, dedication.tex, intro_hist.tex, intro_models.tex, pde_derv.tex, pde_gen.tex, pde_motiv.tex, swig_diss.bbl, EXTRA.tex, mickey.eps

To download all these files together and play with them, you can grab the tar file swig_diss.tar. Then you can untar it by typing the following at the Unix command:

tar xvf swig_diss.tar

This will dump all the files named above into your current directory.

Once you have this file (swig_diss.tex) made up, you turn it into a .dvi file (swig_diss.dvi) by typing (at the Unix prompt)

latex swig_diss.tex

(you'll have to do this up to 3 times, in order to create the files which contain the referencing and numbering info for citations, equations, section numbers, etc.). You can view this .dvi file by typing (at the Unix prompt)

xdvi main.dvi

which will pop up a window where you can view the final product without ever wasting a piece of paper. Once you've proofread your file via xdvi and are ready to print out your final version, you need to turn the document into a postscript (swig_diss.ps) file by typing (at the Unix prompt)

dvips swig_diss.dvi -o swig_diss.ps

Note that dvips has several options (just type dvips with no arguments to view them). For instance, to save just pages 10-20 to a postscript file, type (at the Unix prompt)

dvips -p 10 -l 20 swig_diss.dvi -o swig_diss.ps

This creates the postscript file swig_diss.ps which contains just the pages 10-20 of swig_diss.dvi. (If you omit the -o option, then no .ps file will be created, and the generated postscript info will go directly to your default printer).

At this point, the postscript file can still be viewed without printing anything: at the Unix prompt type

ghostview swig_diss.ps

This will pop up a separate window through which you can view your file swig_diss.ps exactly as it would look printed out. I take every opportunity to avoid wasting paper. Once you do want a hard copy, you can type (at the Unix prompt)

lpr swig_diss.ps

which will print the postscript file swig_diss.ps at your default printer. Most of the formatting work will be taken care of by the beautiful latex2e class file written by Marcel Oliver (ua-thesis.cls). If desired you can move a copy of ua-thesis.cls to the directory which contains this file (swig_diss.tex), and edit/modify it however you want. The copy in your directory will then be the copy which latex2e references for instructions. You can find the system's copy in /usr/local/share/texmf/tex/latex/uaclasses/.

Note: for information on how to use TeX packages with your source code refer to the TeX pages at the math computer support web site.

Happy writing, and good luck with your dissertation/thesis!