Thesis Template UTAL

This repository contains the boilerplate for writing a University of Talca thesis using Pandoc's markdown. See Pandoc's doc for more information on how to use Pandoc.

Motivation

I don't like writing in LaTeX, I think its syntax is too complicated and doesn't let me focus on the writing. A good alternative is to use markdown, which provides a very simple syntax. However, it comes with a trade-off: with markdown alone, you can't customize the output too much.

One of the many flavors of markdown out there is called Pandoc's markdown. The approach I chose to write my thesis was to use pandoc to convert a markdown file using a LaTeX template and a LaTeX engine to generate a PDF output. This way I combine the power of LaTeX with the simplicity of markdown.

One of the great advantages of this approach is that I can write LaTeX and even some HTML inside of the main markdown file. This way I don't depend only on markdown in case I need to do some complex stuff. The rest of the LaTeX code is hidden in the template file, with which I don't need to interact that often.

Requirements

• pandoc
• texlive-full
• pandoc-eqnos
• pandoc-tablenos
• pandoc-secnos
• pandoc-fignos

Notes

1. Depending on your use case, you might not need to install all the packages listed above. See Pandoc-xnos to learn about the filters you can use. Then, adjust the makefile accordingly.

2. I built a docker image that you can use instead of installing all the dependencies directly on your system.

3. template.tex was built with the computer science major in mind. Feel free to inspect it and make any modifications to it.

Instructions

• Clone this repository.
• Run make in the root of the project to create the PDF file.
• Edit the metadata.yaml file to customize the output.
• Edit the dedication.tex, abstract.tex and acknowledgements.tex files.
• Write the core of your thesis inside the thesis.md file.

General recommendations

• The more filters you use, the slower the compilation becomes. Adjust the makefile to use only the filters you really need.
• Use a text editor with appropriate markdown syntax highlighting so that you don't depend too much on looking at the final PDF output. This way you don't need to compile that often.
• Before you hand in your thesis, I suggest you to use find_duplicate_words.sh, a script I made to easily spot duplicate consecutive words you might have written by mistake. You can find it here.

Recommendations for Vim users

• You can compile the files from within Vim in an asynchronous way. See vim-dispatch to learn more.
• To create markdown tables without pain, take a look at vim-table-mode.

Self-Promotion

If you like this template, please consider a donation on PayPal.