ETD Guide/Students/LaTeX

Scientists within the natural and engineering sciences have special needs for mathematics and 
algorithmic graphics. The text formatting system LaTeX has been used for decades to mark up scientific 
documents. Even today, there is no viewable alternative to print texts containing a lot of mathematics 
without using LaTeX. This system uses a kind of semantic or typographic markup for rendering 
formulas, graphs, and so on. Within some disciplines LaTeX is nearly exclusively used to render 
complex documents.
TeX and LaTeX.
TeX is a document formatting language (and the program that processes it) written by Donald Knuth for 
the professional preparation of complex publications. It excels particularly at formatting mathematical 
equations and for managing two-dimensional presentations of data (tabular and otherwise). LaTeX is a 
set of macros written by Leslie Lamport as a "front-end" to TeX that makes articles, reports, theses, 
dissertations, and books easy to create and manage.
How to get LaTeX.
LaTeX is free to download from any CTAN archive (http://www.ctan.org ), and works on 
Macintosh, MS-DOS, Unix, and Windows 3.1/95/NT (though some commands may vary on some 
architectures). To convert your electronic thesis or dissertation in LaTeX, you must first type your 
document completely into the ASCII editor using the LaTeX macros appropriately, then use a certain 
chain of commands that produce a layout and printable version of the document.
LaTeX under UNIX / LINUX systems.
To create LaTeX files, all you need is an ASCII-based editor, like Emacs, Vi. Writing a dissertation just 
means typing the contents and the LaTeX-commands directly in an ASCII-based file and save this as 
To compile a LaTeX file and produce a printable version of the document, you have to follow the 
following steps: 
1. Run latex "latex mydissertation.tex" This produces the following files: 
mydissertation.dvi / mydissertation.aux, etc. 
2. Run dvips "dvips mydissertation.dvi" This produces a file dissertation.ps 
that is printable on a printer, or convertible into PDF. 
While writing your thesis in LaTeX, please keep the following rules in mind: 
As document style we advise to choose report or book, because both start with chapter as the highest 
order for section structuring. The preamble of the latex file could look like in the following example:
With usepackage we import additional styles that are needed, e.g. for tables, mathematics, figures etc. In 
order to get archivable form of the latex dissertations we advise not to use or to program complex
macros. Simple \newcommand or \renewcommand may be used, e.g.
\newcommand{\begin{itemize}}{bi} 
Headings can be separated using the following commands:
 
Levels -1 to 2 appear in the table of contents. Part is used to split the whole document into several parts. 
The chapters numbering are constantly growing. Within the document than a single page is displayed, 
that contains: Part I Introduction or Part II Method and so on. 
Chapters are numbered without taking the parts into account. The numbering is standardized: Chapter 1 
Mathematics. 
Sections are subunits of chapters and numbered: Basic Algorithms.
Chapters are numbered without taking the parts into account. The numbering is standardized: Chapter 1 
Mathematics. 
Sections are subunits of chapters and numbered: Basic Algorithms. 
Sections are numbered as follows: 1.1.1 Decision Tree Algorithm A. 
For those parts like acknowledgements, dedication, and curriculum vita where authors usually don't want 
to use numbering, the following style can be used:
\chapter*{Thank You} . The asterisk prevents the numbering.
Appendices are included using the \appendix command. Please use commands as in the following 
example if your appendix consists of several chapters:
\appendix or
\appendix* not numbered headings of the appendices
Using graphics: figures and pictures should be included in LaTeX documents using the eps (encapsulated 
postscript) format. Before including them, one has to use a certain style package in the preamble: 
\usepackage[dvips]{epsfig} 
The parameter [h] positions the figure at the current position. 
Keep in mind, always to use a caption-environment to put the figure captions below the picture:
\begin{figure}[h]
The title page is the most complicated part. Most universities supply own templates for the title page and 
the whole dissertation. There is no best practice available. In order to separate the several items on a title 
page in order to be able to reuse those information pieces e.g. if the whole dissertation is converted to 
HTML or SGML/XML, we advise to use \newcommands as simplest method to apply a pseudo structure 
to a LaTeX title page. Usually LaTeX provides the following standards item for a title page:
But as this is not enough for a thesis, most universities provide own style sheets or templates. 
Tables should be used as follows: authors are advised to use the table-environment because it provides 
the possibility to include table captions in a structured way.
x &amp; 1 &amp; 2 \\ \hline
1 &amp; 1 &amp; 2 \\
2 &amp; 2 &amp; 4 \\ \hline
Citations can be used as their own structured items as follows:
1. Using the citation-environment. This is used for inline citations. 
\begin