Formatting Thesis according to UNC Thesis Guideline
using Latex
Introduction || Getting
Started || FAQ || Acknowledgement
What's new
The graduate school at UNC has a very strict requirement
about the format of thesis. Check this web
page for the latest requirement. Due to the complexity involved in
thesis writing, many students in this department have chosen to use Latex.
While there has been a Latex style file originally written by Rickard
E. Faith, it does not meet the current (year 2002-2003) graduate school
requirement. Changing format in Latex can be a non-trivial task, this page is
created to facilitate the process. It is a collaborative effort from many
students (see the Acknowledgement section). Note
that this page is NOT a Latex tutorial. There are plenty literatures about this
subject on the web.
One can use Latex under virtually any operating system.
The department has Latex installed on Unix servers. However, using Latex under
Windows is recommended since it allows more flexible controls and there is a
very nice Latex editing tool for PCs. To get started on a PC, follow these steps
(preferably in order):
- Install Miktex from http://www.miktex.org/
--- Miktex is an up-to-date implementation of TeX and related programs for
Windows (all current variants) on x86 systems. It is free.
- Change the default page size of Miktex --- Miktex's
default page size is A4. To change the default size to US Letter once and
for all, find the config.ps
file under Miktex installation (by default it is at c:\texmf\dvips\config\).
Find out the following text block and comment out them with %
@ a4 210mm 297mm
@+ ! %%DocumentPaperSizes:
a4
@+ %%BeginPaperSize:
a4
@+ a4
@+
%%EndPaperSize
- Install Ghostscript and GSview
http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/.
They are free too.
- (Optional) Install WinEdt http://www.winedt.com/
(NOT winedit ) --- WinEdt™ (shareware) is a powerful, extremely
flexible and versatile native editor and shell for MS Windows with a strong
predisposition towards the creation of LaTeX documents. It is highly
recommended, especially for starters. The OOTF
group has a site license.
By now, you should be able to use Latex under Windows. A
sample PDF that meets the graduate school format requirement as of May 2003 can
be found here. The latex source files with necessary
style files can be found here. Try to compile the
main latex file (sample.tex)
under Winedt to see if you can produce the same result. If so, congratulations,
you only have the contents of your thesis or dissertation to worry
about.
- What
is a good reference book for Latex?
- I
print the sample PDF, but the margins are not right, why?
- How
to insert the extra space between entries in the list of figures (or
tables)?
- How
to define short versions of captions to be listed in the list of figures (or
tables)?
- Which
biography style should be used to pass the inspection of the "Margin
Lady"?
- How to embed ALL fonts (including
the times family) in a PDF file?
- What
is a good reference book for Latex?
Most people have the Latex
Companion
by Michel Goossens, Frank Mittelbach, Alexander Samarin, Michel Goosens. I
personally find the A
Guide to LATEX: Document Preparation for Beginners and Advanced Users (3rd
Edition) by Helmut Kopka and Patrick W.
Daly a better reference book.
- I
print the sample PDF, but the margins are not right, why?
Different printers tend to print out pages differently. A piece of advice is
to stick with the printer by which the final version will be
printed.
- How
to insert the extra space between entries in the list of figures (or
tables)?
The graduate school requires extra space between entries in the list of
figures. A workaround here is to manually insert a blank line in every figure except the last one in every chapter since there is extra space already. Two new commands,
\addLOFspace and \addLOFspace, are
defined in the sample latex file.
- How
to define short versions of captions to be listed in the list of figures (or
tables)?
In the \caption command, one can supply an optional short caption in square bracket
[] for use in the list of figures (LOF), which makes the LOF much nicer. Without the short caption, the LOF will display the full caption.
Same rules apply to the list of tables.
- Which
biography style should be used to pass the inspection of the "Margin
Lady"?
The graduate school requires that every entry in Bibliography be indented. The closest thing I can find is the
apalike bib style, which produces something like
This work is
motivated by (McMillan and Bishop, 1995; Levoy and Hanrahan, 1996).
Note that in the apalike bib style, there should be NO space between different citations. For example, the following usage would cause problems
\cite{CiteA,_CiteB}, where
_ is a while space.
- How to embed ALL fonts (including
the times family) in a PDF file?
The ps2pdf batch file has to be changed. Assuming winedt is used, the batch
file is typically under C:\Program Files\WinEdt
Team\WinEdt\Bin. Open the batch file and add the
option -dPDFSETTINGS=/printer for gswin32c. This approach has
been tested with Ghostscript 8.13. Note that the typical options,
-dSubsetFonts=true -dEmbedAllFonts=true,
do not work without the pdf setting.
- How to embed ALL fonts
using pdflatex with Miktex?
in C:\localtexmf\pdftex\config
copy pdftex_dl14.map to psfonts.map, which was originally a copy of
pdftex_ndl14.map.
The original Latex style file (UNCthesis.sty)
was written by Rickard E. Faith in 1996.
Since then, it has been modified by John Keyser,
Tom Hudson, Michele Weigle,
and Ruigang Yang.
This page was originally started by Ruigang
Yang