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Guest blog post by Raniere Silva

Two years ago, some friends invited me to write a LaTeX template for PhD thesis that follow the style requested by the University of Campinas, one of the most prestigious public universities in Brazil. Before we started writing the template we spent some time designing it, and we came up with some key features that would be required:

• use of version control that allows students to easily upgrade the template after three or four years using it,
• make it easy for students to hack it, i.e., avoid using *.sty files and
• include some popular packages and some "unknown" but very useful packages.

During these two years the template was used by many students (unfortunately I don't have an estimate of how many). Students with advance knowledge of LaTeX didn't have problems using and hacking the template but students with basic knowledge of LaTeX (or using it for the first time) had many problems, e.g.:

• using the wrong encoding (LATIN-1 instead of UFT-8),
• getting lost due many *.tex files,
• packages being unavailable on their machine.

Hoping to help students get the most of the template, I and Abel Siqueira, with the support of writeLaTeX, will be running a free workshop on September 27th.

In the workshop we'll teach basic knowledge of LaTeX and how to use writeLaTeX to avoid most of the problems that beginners have had in past years (and also to help them begin using it to collaborate with others).

The thesis template is also available in the writeLaTeX template gallery.

About the author

Raniere is a Software Carpentry instructor who helps to support young researchers in learning software skills useful for science, engineering and medicine.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, Raniere Silva, and do not necessarily reflect the views of writeLaTeX.