How to create an Honours thesis

How Do I create a School of Earth Sciences Honours thesis on the Linux Machines?

Easy! You can use a package called "pdflatex" along with the files that you can download from this page. "pdflatex" is a structured text formatting and typesetting utility that is installed on the linux machines.

Let's create a sample thesis

A sample thesis document can be created in a few easy steps;

Download the file Hthesis.tar into a direcotry in your work area (e.g /work99/username/words )

change to that directory ( eg type cd /work99/username/words)

type tar -xvf Hthesis.tar at the command line - this creates a directory named Hthesis

type cd Hthesis

type ls -l you will see:

       abstract         - Directory containing Abstract.tex 
                         
       acknowledgments  - Directory containing Acknowledgments.tex 
                         
       appendices       - Directory containing examples of Appendices ie. Appendix1.tex 

       chapters         - Directory containing examples of chapters ie Chapter1.tex 

       create_thesis    - a script that creates a pdf version of the thesis 
                          (named thesis.pdf) 


       figures          - Directory that contains an example figure that is called
                          by Chapter1.tex - you can put your figures in here or keep
                          them elsehere an "link" to them as in the example (Chapter1.tex)
 
       references       - Directory containing refs.bib that you enter your 
                          references into.

       styles           - Directory containg the AGU reference style (agu.sty) 
                          you should never need to look at or edit this file

       thesis.tex        - This is the main file that you use to "include" the abstract,
                          acknowledgments, chapters, references and appendices. It also contains 
                          the commands to automatically create a table of contents, lists of 
                          figures and tables and number pages.
       
       titlepage        - Directory containing an example title or cover page for the thesis, 
                          which contains the authors name and thesis title (Titlepage.tex)

type ./create_thesis - this will run the commands in this script, and create a pdf version of a sample thesis (named thesis.pdf).

The ./create_thesis runs the commands that you could also do at the line prompt;

pdflatex thesis - this will format the thesis.tex and the other .tex files that it "includes"

bibtex thesis - this will format the references

pdflatex thesis - need to run this again the include references

pdflatex thesis - need to run again to make sure that all of the references are "caught"

Let's modify the sample thesis

type more thesis.tex you will see in the thesis.tex file the lines;

  %-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
  \begin{document}

  \include{titlepage/Titlepage}               % This is who you are / your topic

edit titlepage/Titlepage.tex (eg. emacs titlepage/Titlepage.tex)

Replace "Example of honours thesis" with your thesis title

Replace "Joe Citizen" with your name

type ./create_thesis .If no problems are encountered a new thesis.pdf file will have been created.

type acroread thesis.pdf to use Adobe Acrobat to view your modified thesis!

Now each time you see an "\include" statement in thesis.tex you will need to put the results of your work in that file as appropriate...

Good Luck!