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Clean Thesis – A clean, simple, and elegant LaTeX style for thesis documents

cleanthesis.der-ric.de

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Re: Clean Thesis – A clean, simple, and elegant LaTeX style for thesis documents

#21

Post by fdej »

ginko wrote: post #2

Isn't the LaTeX stylesheet for your thesis usually dictated by your university? It was for me at least..

In my case, I only had to use a predetermined stylesheet for the title page.

I've heard of one university (there must be others) where there's a thick compendium that specifies exactly which font to use where on each page, what spacings and margins to use, how to format the table of contents, etc. Not actually a LaTeX stylesheet you can use, but a list of rules that you manually have to make sure your thesis conforms with. Of course, the rules were written with MS Word in mind, but math/CS/science people who need to use LaTeX have to replicate the rules in detail. Of course, there's a person employed by the university to check that your submitted thesis exactly conforms with the rules, or else it will be rejected.

The person who told me this might have embellished the story, but sadly it sounds all too plausible to me.

Re: Clean Thesis – A clean, simple, and elegant LaTeX style for thesis documents

#22

Post by johnchristopher »

bhaak wrote: post #14
johnchristopher wrote: post #5

I thought the default style(s) were the results of years of micro tweaking and deep studies of the impact of character positioning and flows by Knuth and that only the default \LaTeX{} style could give that 2% head start or that A instead of a B++ for any essay. Now we add blue titles ? And sans serif font ? Sarcasm apart, it looks good. Some links are 404 on the page though (classic thesis, etc.).

You seem to confuse TeX and LaTeX. Knuth himself doesn't do LaTeX so the default styles aren't from him. It's been a while since I read the documentation to KOMAscript and Memoir but I think both contain some criticism on Lamport's default styles. There is nothing wrong per se with a sans serif font for titles as long as it fits to the serif font for the main text. I'm not quite convinced though that this is the case…

> You seem to confuse TeX and LaTeX. Knuth himself doesn't do LaTeX so the default styles aren't from him.

Oops, mea culpa. You're right, I mixed both thinking Latex and Tex were quite equivalent in term of style rendering. I never bothered looking into Tex, I just wrote some Latex classes (and documents, of course).

> BTW, the README states that this layout has been "inspired by user guide documents from Apple Inc." So don't bash on the ground it might look like a Word document. ;-)

Oh but Word wasn't on my mind at all when I commented. I even followed the link on keynote to see what was the reference (since I never looked at keynote or iLifexxx documentation).

Re: Clean Thesis – A clean, simple, and elegant LaTeX style for thesis documents

#23

Post by mrweasel »

ginko wrote: post #2

Isn't the LaTeX stylesheet for your thesis usually dictated by your university? It was for me at least..

I think ours was just a style one from ACM. IT made it easy to publish papers because the format was already correct.

Re: Clean Thesis – A clean, simple, and elegant LaTeX style for thesis documents

#24

Post by MengerSponge »

johnchristopher wrote: post #5

I thought the default style(s) were the results of years of micro tweaking and deep studies of the impact of character positioning and flows by Knuth and that only the default \LaTeX{} style could give that 2% head start or that A instead of a B++ for any essay. Now we add blue titles ? And sans serif font ? Sarcasm apart, it looks good. Some links are 404 on the page though (classic thesis, etc.).

I doubt there were deep studies, because there so much of a document's design is a matter of taste. For example, Don Knuth really liked a certain generation of math journals, so he built TeX and CM to emulate that. Just because it's the default doesn't mean it's an optimal design.

I'm partial to serif fonts, and Scala in particular, but Apple's design documents are beautiful too, and I can't begrudge someone wanting to emulate their design.

Re: Clean Thesis – A clean, simple, and elegant LaTeX style for thesis documents

#25

Post by analog31 »

sdoering wrote: post #19
ccannon wrote: post #18

Stop wasting time coming up with elegant thesis formats and finish your thesis!

What on this site told you he did not already? And why your tone of voice, emanating from your comment?

The only time anybody cares about the formatting of a thesis is when they are not finishing one. ;-)

Re: Clean Thesis – A clean, simple, and elegant LaTeX style for thesis documents

#27

Post by hiphopyo »

johnchristopher wrote: post #5

I thought the default style(s) were the results of years of micro tweaking and deep studies of the impact of character positioning and flows by Knuth and that only the default \LaTeX{} style could give that 2% head start or that A instead of a B++ for any essay. Now we add blue titles ? And sans serif font ? Sarcasm apart, it looks good. Some links are 404 on the page though (classic thesis, etc.).

+1. The blue titles, the unnecessary lines and the fact that he branded it with the whole CleanThesis thing doesn't really sound clean in my book.

I'm currently looking for a thesis template as well, but the more I come across (1) the more I just want to do something like http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/.

(1) http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/326/latex-templates-f...

Re: Clean Thesis – A clean, simple, and elegant LaTeX style for thesis documents

#28

Post by Steuard »

ginko wrote: post #2

Isn't the LaTeX stylesheet for your thesis usually dictated by your university? It was for me at least..

At the University of Chicago, the thesis office didn't give any indication that they'd ever heard of LaTeX. But they did hand us a long list of formatting requirements (precise margins, contents format, lots of other details) and it was clear that any deviation from those would result in your thesis being handed right back to you.

Fortunately, there was a LaTeX style file that had been handed around the physics department for years that generations of grad students had tuned to meet the requirements. Doing my part, I tweaked it a bit to handle some special cases that came up in my thesis (and, I think, to clean up the code in one or two places) and passed it on to the next generation. (I shudder to think of how many forks there must have been; I saw at least two or three while I was preparing my version. Maybe someone has put a canonical version on GitHub by now: nothing of the sort was really on our radar back then.)

Re: Clean Thesis – A clean, simple, and elegant LaTeX style for thesis documents

#29

Post by thearn4 »

ginko wrote: post #2

Isn't the LaTeX stylesheet for your thesis usually dictated by your university? It was for me at least..

Yep. For me, the PhD LaTeX stylesheet was a file passed down and updated from graduate student to graduate student for who knows how many decades in my dept.

Re: Clean Thesis – A clean, simple, and elegant LaTeX style for thesis documents

#30

Post by paulojreis »

hiphopyo wrote: post #27
johnchristopher wrote: post #5

I thought the default style(s) were the results of years of micro tweaking and deep studies of the impact of character positioning and flows by Knuth and that only the default \LaTeX{} style could give that 2% head start or that A instead of a B++ for any essay. Now we add blue titles ? And sans serif font ? Sarcasm apart, it looks good. Some links are 404 on the page though (classic thesis, etc.).

+1. The blue titles, the unnecessary lines and the fact that he branded it with the whole Clean Thesis thing doesn't really sound clean in my book. I'm currently looking for a thesis template as well, but the more I come across (1) the more I just want to do something like http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ . (1) http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/326/latex-templates-f...

This link got me started in TeX (I was just barely aware of its existence before). http://nitens.org/taraborelli/cvtex

Not a thesis template at all, but great ideas and it sheds some light on how to get decent typography.

On a side note, I think it would be great to have a good WYSIWYG TeX editor for office/basic user level of proficiency. Typesetting does matter, it profoundly impacts reading, which is particularly relevant when you're giving 300+ pages of your hard work for someone else to read. It would be very good for everyone to get decent default typesetting. Unfortunately, our alternatives are:

* Word/typical word processors, which are are horrible at typesetting;

* TeX, which is good, but it's hard for most people and has an aura of complexity (it's code, after all...);

* Publishing software, such as Adobe InDesign, which are indeed great at typesetting, but only if you know what you are doing. This is professional software, which is clearly not aimed at common users.

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