On Thu, Apr 10, 2014 at 5:14 PM, Steve Burnham <[email protected]> wrote:
> I am trying to write my thesis using LyX but I am experiencing some > confusion/problems with importing my universities thesis class and create > the LyX template. > Hi Steve, I used LyX for my thesis, and had to customize things to work for my university template. Perhaps you have already figured some of this out, but I would like to provide a few suggestions for how to proceed: 1) Download the template (including both the necessary .cls/sty files and a minimal example). Your university should provide a working example. If they don't then find a classmate or friend that has one. 2) Get the minimal example to compile and produce acceptable output using regular old LaTeX. 3) Write a minimal layout file for LyX so the class shows up. 4) Put in everything you need from the example document, at this stage you will typically use ERT liberally, and have a load of stuff in the preamble. 5) Debug until the document compiles in LyX just as it did in regular LaTeX. 6+) [optional] Gradually improve the LyX interface by modifying the .layout file to support more of the thesis template's features, which will allow you to remove ERT. It appears to me that you tried to start somewhere in the middle of this process, which I wouldn't generally recommend. It looks like you tried to modify the book layout file to use with your document class. Now, I could have missed something, but it looks like your university's document class is not based on book. So, that won't work. To explain a bit more in case you are lost with what I mean, a LaTeX document typically relies on a document class. That class can either be an "original" document class, or a derived one. By "original," I mean a document class that was written from scratch. There are several document classes that come standard with LaTeX. These include book, article, report, etc. Now, when a person writes a new document class (to use for a university thesis, for instance) they usually create a derived class. By that, I mean that they import the base class, inheriting all of the goodness from it. The book class is usually a good base class for a thesis template, but article is also sometimes used. Just as in LaTeX, .cls or .sty files, LyX .layout files can be created by modifying an existing one. The guiding principle in doing that is to create a new .layout file by modifying the same .layout file your class was based on (again, for theses, this is usually the book class). In any case, it looks to me like the person(s) who wrote the thesis template you sent started from scratch. That means modifying the layout for the book class won't work as well as one might hope. It might end up requiring a bit more work, so my recommendation is to start at step 1 above, then ask again once you get past step 2 (and include the minimal example in your response, it will make it easier to help). Jacob p.s. I did my MS at BYU and PhD at USU (both theses were written in LyX). If it had been one of those, I would have a drop-in solution for you.
