markdown-latex-template

With this template you can write your thesis in Markdown, while still using all the awesome LaTeX features, including

• Table of Contents
• Figures
• Listings
• Bibliography

etc.

Content written in Markdown is converted to LaTeX using pandoc and then converted to pdf with pdflatex.

Markdown Cheatsheet

Table of Contents

• Prerequisites
• Build
• Commands
  • Referencing Chapters
  • Images
  • Sources
  • Math
• Structure
  • Content
  • Images
  • Include
  • Important Files

Prerequisites

You need to install these packages to work with the template:

TeX Live: sudo apt-get install texlive

biber: sudo apt-get install biber

pandoc: sudo apt-get install pandoc

And the following: sudo apt-get install lmodern texlive-bibtex-extra texlive-latex-extra

Build

To create the pdf, run ./build.sh nameofpdf

Commands

The syntax is plain Markdown. You can find a great cheatsheet here.

The following commands are common in writing a thesis or specific for pandoc. Check out 01.md for more.

Referencing Chapters

To reference certain chapters you need to annotate the heading:

# Chapter 1 {#chapter-one}

You can then reference it in your text with

...as previously discussed in [Chapter 1](#chapter-one)...

Images

Add an image to /images. You can then add it to your document with

![Caption of your image \label{your-label}](images/your-image.png)

and reference it with \ref{your-label}.

Sources

Simply reference your sources by writing [@dune1990].

Math

You can add Math to your document in LaTeX syntax. But you need to annotate it with $ to signal math-mode.

For example math:

$\begin{aligned}
\dot{x} & = \sigma(y-x) \\
\dot{y} & = \rho x – y – xz \\
\dot{z} & = -\beta z + xy
\end{aligned}$

Structure

This is the folder structure:

├── build.sh
├── content
│   ├── 01.md
│   └── 02.md
├── images
│   ├── cat.jpg
│   └── monster.jpg
├── include
│   ├── abstract.tex
│   ├── acknowledgements.tex
│   ├── APPENDIX.tex
│   ├── eigenstaendigkeitserklaerung.tex
│   └── titlepage.tex
├── library.bib
├── LICENSE
├── metadata.md
├── README.md
├── template.tex

Content

This is where you put your content written in Markdown. You don't need to include these files anywhere because they are added automatically by pandoc.

Images

Self-explanatory. Images go here.

Include

Sometimes it is still necessary to create custom tex-files like the abstract or the titlepage. This is the place to put them.

You need to include those in metadata.md either as include-before or include-after.

For example:

include-before:
    - include/titlepage.tex
    - include/eigenstaendigkeitserklaerung.tex
    - include/abstract.tex
    - include/acknowledgements.tex
include-after:
    - include/APPENDIX.tex

Important Files

• build.sh

This is the build-script you need to run if you want to build your pdf. It takes one argument which is the desired name of the pdf.

For example:

./build.sh mythesis

• library.bib

This is your bibliography and contains all your sources. It is referenced in metadata.md. You can also specify multiple bib-files.

biblio-files: 
    - library1.bib
    - library2.bib
    - ...

• metadata.md

You can specify settings and metadata in here. These can then be accessed in template.tex.

For example:

$for(header-includes)$
  $header-includes$
$endfor$

• template.tex

This is the most important file. pandoc uses the template.tex to convert markdown into LaTeX. It is referenced in build.sh.