Weblog Archive

Thesis/dissertation LaTeX document classes and packages

LaTeX Class File for a Georgia Tech Thesis. After painstakingly trying to tweak the "report" document class that comes standard with LaTeX to produce a document that fits my graduate school requirements, I decided to throw all that work out! I wanted to start fresh with a whole new document class for my thesis and began searching. I came across a class file that is currently actively updated by Charles Wilson at Georgia Tech. The files are distributed as GPL and seems to fit the bill for my graduate school requirements as well (well, almost fits it with very minor modifications).

I don't think the 1.6e patch is implemented within the current 1.6.tar.gz package file that is available for download. I wish Charles left an email or some contact info for me to ask him whether it is included or not. Also there are no instructions on how to apply the patch. Anyone out there know how to patch it to 1.6e? Could you care to tell me how to do this?

You can use the LaTeX package for your thesis, but would have to change "Georgia Institute of Technology" in the gatech-thesis.cls fle to the name of your university. The reason I am probably going to use this LaTeX package as opposed to the many other thesis packages is because it is closest to the requirements for my university and because it appears to be actively updated. Of course, YMMV.

I installed the package on my Debian Linux box, here's how I did it:

1. I copied the files to the following locations:

• /usr/local/share/texmf/tex/latex/gatech-thesis/gatech-thesis.cls


• /usr/local/share/texmf/tex/latex/gatech-thesis/gatech-thesis-patch.sty


• /usr/local/share/texmf/tex/latex/gatech-thesis/gatech-thesis-losa.sty


• /usr/local/share/texmf/tex/latex/gatech-thesis/gatech-thesis-gloss.sty


• /usr/local/share/texmf/tex/latex/gatech-thesis/gatech-thesis-index.sty


• /usr/local/share/texmf/bibtex/bst/gatech-thesis/gatech-thesis.bst


• /usr/local/share/texmf/bibtex/bst/gatech-thesis/gatech-thesis-losa.bst


• /usr/local/share/texmf/makeindex/gatech-thesis/gatech-thesis-index.ist

2. Luckily, my Debian /etc/texmf/texmf.cf file already came standard with the line of text "TEXMFLOCAL = /usr/local/share/texmf" so I didn't have to add that in. But if you're distro doesn't have that, add it.
3. I then ran "texhash" to have the latex system re-index all package files. Charles mentioned something like "initexmf -u" to refresh the database, but I couldn't come across any program with that name.

I don't see why the same procedure couldn't work in say Mac OS X or any other *NIX latex system. Read the INSTALL file to find out how to refresh the database after copying the files in a MikTeX system in a Windows environment.

I would like to add that sadly, my university is not as up-to-date about creating thesis templates for their students like GA Tech appears to be. Kudos to GA Tech for helping out their students. For those of you using this package, good luck, and good writing. And if you come up with any useful hacks to this document class, please let me know about it. Come to think of it, I'm sure Charles Wilson would like to know about the hack as well, if you can find his contact info.

Posted by johnvu at January 30, 2004 12:02 PM