Latex Resources for MA Theses

The Department of Mathematics is now requiring that MA theses be done in LaTeX, using the ucthesis style. The front pages must be done as required by Graduate Studies. If you wish to install LaTeX on your computer (here we are presuming a MS windows system), you will want:

Miktex

Miktex is the main LaTeX engine. If you have easy internet access, you will actually want to install the basic LaTeX version . This "small" version is about 25 MB. A "complete" version runs around 250 MB. With the complete version you can typeset chess problems in swedish. The small version should be enough for your thesis.

Important: When installing Miktex 2.6, be sure to choose "letter" for your paper size, not "A4".

A shell to run LaTeX.

Miktex does not include the graphical front end which makes it easier to use LaTeX. Either of the following two programs is suitable (for use with Microsoft Windows):

TeXnicCenter is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for writing TeX/LaTeX-documents on Microsoft Windows platforms. It provides a lot of enhanced features like structure parsing, project management, syntax highlighting, etc. TexnicCenter is licensed as GPL software, and is free.
WinEdt is another integrated development environment. WinEdt is shareware (currently $30 for students). It is a bit more polished than TeXnicCenter. It is also designed to work with Miktex.

Ghostscript and Ghostview:

You will need these to include graphics (postscript files) in your thesis:

GPL Ghostscript installation file for Windows.
You (most likely) will need to configure a few of the ghostscript related programs to use letter rather than A4 paper. The program will do most of this. You may also have to configure ghostview separately,
GSview is a graphical interface for Ghostscript. Ghostscript is an interpreter for the PostScript page description language used by laser printers. Postsript is the standard for LaTeX graphics.

An alternative to postscript is to use pdf graphics and pdflatex. The graphics must be pdf files (Maple will produce eps files, but not pdf). You will need to check that your graphics program produces pdf files, or find a way to convert to pdf.

CSUSB particular files:

These are available is a zipped folder: csusb.zip ( updated July 30, 2007) which should be placed in a folder which is to contain your thesis. Unzip this file (Most computers have a zip utility already. If yours does not, you can get a free one from: http://www.7-zip.org/ ) The files in the zip file are:

csusb.sty a wrapper for ucthesis class
egthesis.bib an example bibliography
egthesis.tex an example thesis
Instructions.doc MS Word file of instructions
Template.tex a template for your thesis
uct10.clo, uct11.clo, uct12.clo font related files
ucthesis.cls the uc thesis class
letter_test_page.tex test page to check configuration

Take the file called Template.tex , and copy this file to an appropriately named file, such as mythesis.tex , and begin writing your thesis. For your bibliography, you will need to construct a bibliography file. An example file egthesis.bib is included

The file letter_test_page.tex should be LaTeX'd and run through dvips (in Texniccenter, use build to ps). You should print it out on the printer you will be using to print your thesis. The box should be centered on the page with 1" margins. If your margins are noticably uneven, you probably have your system configured for A4 paper and not Letter.

Updated July 30, 2007: this is an updated version of csusb.sty included in the zip file. If you downloaded the zip file before July 30, 2007 you should update this file. You may wish to save the version on your computer as "csusb_old.sty" just in case. The changes are:

11/14/2005 Updated to fix the bug for spacing when the Graduate Coordinator is changed
05/22/2006 Fixed spacing problem on acknowledgements page.
05/22/2006 Fixed margins to meet csusb requirements.
01/09/2007 Fixed signature lines
05/23/2007 Fixed signature line for advisor
05/23/2007 Readjusted margin factors.
05/23/2007 Adujsted rules on title and signature pages.
05/23/2007 Adjusted abstract and acknowledgement spacing
07/30/2007 Redefined table of contents to produce ``Appendix A'' instead of ``A''

LaTeX Resources

You may find some of the following resources useful:

CSUSB LaTex Thesis Tips
A Not So Short Introduction to LaTeX 2e
Handbook of Writing for the Mathematical Sciences, Nicholas J. Higham. Pfau Library, QA 42 H54 1998
The The Comprehensive Tex Archive Network has (almost) everything in the Tex world.
AMS LaTeX documentation . This should also be available in C:\texmf\doc\latex\amsldoc.pdf under miktex. This explains how to make fancier equation constructs ( such as split equations), matrices of various sorts, and much more.
Using the graphicx (graphics extended) package.