An Over-Engineered Thesis Template

The first step in actually writing a thesis is to procrastinate and create a thesis document setup.

This repository is a starting point with a few neat (and some might rightfully say unnecessary) features. You might also want to check out the post about this repository with slightly more information.

Features

• Easy building with Nix or alternatively with a plain Makefile
• Markdown input with Pandoc: references, LaTeX passthrough, ...
• Dynamic image conversion: edit images and have the result in your document, immediately
• Generate plots from data

Installing and Usage

Using Nix

It builds as a Nix flake. If you have Nix installed, try it! It is as easy as nix build github:pascalj/thesis-template. Or clone the repository and use nix build <your-repo>. Locally, just use nix build.

Git and Makefile

Clone the repository, install all dependencies and call make.

Dependencies

• Pandoc, pandoc-crossref and pandoc-fignum
• A complete LaTeX environment
• make

Optionally for the image conversion:

• Inkscape
• Graphviz
• Python
  • numpy
  • matplotlib
• R
  • tidyverse
  • tikzDevice

About

It uses Pandoc Markdown files as input and produces a PDF file via LaTeX as the output. Pandoc Markdown lets you use LaTeX inline, should you ever have to.

Images are creates from "source" where possible. For example, graphs described in the dot language are compiled to Tex, SVGs are converted with Inkscape and you can even generate images with Python and R, e.g. with data from CSV files.

Contributing

If you find anything not working or missing, just send me a PR!