Copyright 2013, all rights reserved (for now), excepting that you have my full permission to borrow specific techniques I've used here for including graphics, bibliography, etc. But that'd be covered under fair use anyway, I think.
This is based on the ucastrothesis, with modifications to use some LaTeX packages I'd already started using previously. My changes to not indicate a belief that my way is better - just that I'd already done some things my way! See below for more on the template.
This is a set of skeleton files that will help you create a University of California dissertation using LaTeX. It's built on the venerable "ucthesis.cls" file, but adds key improvements to track changes in the thesis formatting guidelines as well as many other improvements.
It's named "ucastrothesis" since the files and lore originate in the UC Berkeley Astronomy Department, but the setup will be applicable to anyone that uses LaTeX with small changes.
The key files that you need to look at are:
setup.tex, where you enter boilerplate info like your thesis title.thesis.tex, where you put toplevel LaTeX definitions, include packages, and write your abstract, dedication, and acknowledgements.intro/intro.tex, a template thesis chapter.Makefile, which defines the rules for how the thesis is compiled.
The intended file structure is for each chapter to have its own subdirectory where all of the necessary files are kept, and then to keep miscellaneous text and other thesis-wide resources in the toplevel directory (which is the one containing this file).
The Makefile is set up so that you can just type make to compile
your thesis as a beautiful, rules-compliant PDF. Typing make all will
also generate the signature page upon which your committee will put
their precious, precious marks.
The Makefile contains an example of using the powerful
dependency-tracking features of make to generate auxiliary files as
you compile your thesis. Add a file to the "deps" variable if it
needs to be created before compiling your thesis; add it to "cleans"
if it can safely be deleted to force regeneration of all your thesis
files (via make clean).
Things will go the most smoothly if you take the time to learn a bit about how
latex, make, and git work. All three are very powerful tools that
are worth understanding.
The xetex branch of this repository includes support for compiling your
thesis with the XeTeX engine rather than standard
LaTeX. The main benefit of this is that XeTeX supports modern fonts much
better than classic LaTeX; in this author's judgment, you can do much better
than standard LaTeX with a well-chosen font (Times New Roman, or Libertine
on Linux). XeTeX also lets you use Unicode characters (such as: é Å ☺)
directly in your document. See the XeTeX homepage, or
Google for more information.
If you run into problems with these templates or would like to contribute an improvement, please use the GitHub issue tracker and/or file a pull request. If you're having LaTeX issues, the TeX StackExchange is an excellent resource.
Copyright 2012, 2013 Peter Williams
This file is free documentation; the copyright holder gives unlimited permission to copy, distribute, and modify it.