It's funny how this reply came at the right time for me. I'm writing a thesis proposal and was wasting all this time trying out different latex templates.
Simon. On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 10:15 AM, Charles Forsyth <[email protected]> wrote: > Having read the replies, I thought I'd offer slightly different advice. > You are writing a dissertation. The formatting just needs to be what > satisfies your university's format requirements, which usually are > broad. I'd be surprised if they required an index for instance. Don't > waste time and effort on the formatting. For one thing, few people > will actually read your dissertation, unless what you're doing is > stupendous (and then they won't care about the format): your proof-reader > (you have got one, haven't you?), your supervisor, your examiners, > and ... that's usually about it. (Your parents will look at it.) If your > supervisor > supervisor can start fussing about the prettiness of (say) your equations > and tables rather than their content, you can reasonably suggest to him that > you > would appear to be finished. Just do a few test runs first of typical > equations > just to check that the output is at least reasonable. > > Much later, when your topic turns out to be important again, someone like > me will remember seeing your dissertation mentioned, or find it through > Google^, > but I can assure you that by we'll still be more interested in the content. > > I'd use the system with which you're most familiar. You don't want the > added distractions of trying to debug the typesetting software, and when > something goes wrong, it's much easier if you've used it before. (In my own > case, the night of the submission deadline, when I came to do > the final copy, I discovered that the troff installation Had Somehow Changed > and the output was completely messed up. Unfortunately that predated Plan 9 > and yesterday(1), > but fortunately it's easy to check each stage of the pipeline, and > I could work out where to look for the change to undo. > > If you're using troff, pick up a copy of refer from contrib. > > On 2 December 2011 13:02, hugo rivera <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> soon I'll begin to write my thesis and I am planing to use ... > >
