SO, YOU WANNA WRITE A DISSERTATION?
YOU'VE COME TO THE "WRITE" PLACE.
Today, I turned my dissertation into the GEMS office (in the Lee Bldg). They examined it with their rulers, checked the bolds, the capitals, the centered fonts, and it measured up to their exacting, if bizarre, specifications. It was not easy to get it that way. For science and math Ph.D.s, TEX formatting is probably the way to go. But, using TEX can be a pain in the rear, especially when the typesetting standards are set in red tape from the days of the humble typewriter. So, I present to you the following information, files, and instructions for creating your own masterpiece. Keep in mind that standards can change. Go and buy a $3 dissertation manual from the basement of the Armory, just to supplement this information. I received significant help in this process from Dottie Brosius in IREAP and my advisor, Dan Lathrop, and I (and now you) owe them many thanks. I hope this page makes your dissertation writing experience easier than my own.
Benjamin Zeff, 2002
First things first. Here is a 2 MB(!) pdf of my entire dissertation. The elements of it are as follows: Abstract, Title page, Copyright page, Acknowledgements, Table of Contents, List of Figures, List of Tables, Chapters 1-5, Appendix A, Bibliography, CV. All of the .tex files are listed below, along with a few others. Only three of these files are actually compiled individually: abstract.tex, mainthesis.tex, and cv.tex. The mainthesis.tex file, when compiled, gathers all of the other parts (but not the abstract and cv) and makes the Table of Contents, List of Figures, and List of Tables. I have not included the figure files here. Amongst the other files here are zeff.cls and zeff.sty.
These two do all the important formatting for you.
zeff.sty An up-to-date UMD dissertation style file.
zeff.cls An up-to-date UMD dissertation class file.
All of the TEX files.
abstract.tex Self-contained dissertation abstract, fully formatted and compiled separately.
acknowledgements.tex Formatted acknowledgements page, compiled in mainthesis.tex.
appendix.tex My formatted appendix, compiled in mainthesis.tex. Yours will likely be much different.
bibliography.tex The bibliography, in accepted AIP format, compiled in mainthesis.tex.
chapter1.tex First chapter, compiled in mainthesis.tex
chapter2.tex Second chapter, compiled in mainthesis.tex
chapter3.tex Third chapter, compiled in mainthesis.tex
chapter4.tex Fourth chapter, compiled in mainthesis.tex
chapter5.tex Fifth chapter, compiled in mainthesis.tex
copyright.tex Copyright page, compiled in mainthesis.tex
cv.tex My CV/resume, fully formatted and compiled separately
mainthesis.tex This file draws the other parts together and is where you add chapters, etc.
titlepage.tex Formatted title page, compiled in mainthesis.tex
Now, how do you actually use these files? I used "PCTEX", though I also successfully compiled it using the LATEX on our SGI machines. The first step is to get all of the above files into one directory on your computer. All of the figures, which I did not include here, must be in that directory. All of my figures were .eps files. One can use other formats, but I cannot help you there. So, you have this folder with all the .tex files, the .eps figure files, and the zeff.sty and zeff.cls files in it. Using your TEX compiler, you need to compile three things: abstract.tex, mainthesis.tex, and cv.tex (optional). Those three go in that order in the dissertation (on fancy thesis paper you can buy at the bookstore).
In PCTEX, just open each of these three files, and click "LATEX" at the top for each one. When you get the .dvi file, you can save it as a .ps file. On the SGI boxes, you do the following set of commands to compile: (1) "latex file.tex" to compile, (2) "dvips -f file > file.ps" to create a post-script version, and (3) "gs file.ps" to view it.
So, much of this work can be cut and paste for you. Cut my work out. Paste yours in. Examples of bibliography entries, references to figures, tables, equations, and placement of figures can be found throughout the chapters. I'd recommend printing out a chapter (#2 would be a good choice) from the PDF version and printing out the corresponding TEX code. Use that as a guide for how to do all of these various things.
One additional formatting note. I placed all of my figures on pages by themselves. If you want them placed in the text, just change the [p] in a figure reference (that's for "page") to [h] (that's for "here").
I hope that the above is obvious enough to be used by someone as confused as I was when I started.
GOOD LUCK!