This repository contains a minimal & modern LaTeX template for dissertations and other university documents.
For the impatient or curious: this is what the template looks like. You may also want to take a look at my Ph.D. dissertation, which uses a predecessor of this template.
Before going over the details of this template, why not look at how it looks in practice? The following documents have been typeset with this template (or a slightly modified variant of it):
Please open a pull request if you want your document to be listed here, and consider acknowledging this repository.
This template aims to be…
It is specifically suited for the European education system because it uses A4 paper size by default—this can be easily adjusted to fit your personal needs, though (see below).
The class is based on KOMA-script
, so it should be
flexible enough to suit virtually any purpose.
If you are using Overleaf, download latex-mimosis
in the gallery. If you want to use the template locally, follow these
steps:
mimosis.cls
into your document directory\documentclass{mimosis}
to your document preambleThesis.tex
and the files in Sources
as
a starting pointlatexmk
to build the documentWhile you can customise everything to your heart's desire, you should
probably start with changing the fonts. I strongly recommend to use
xelatex
or lualatex
to build the document, as this will make font
selection almost trivial. Essentially, you only require these three
commands (I took the liberty to specify some example fonts):
\setmainfont{Baskerville}
\setsansfont{IBM Plex Sans}
\setmonofont{IBM Plex Mono}
Put these commands in your main file such as Thesis.tex
and be sure to
remove this code block here:
\ifxetexorluatex
% ...
\else
% ...
\fi
Note that the document will work fine nevertheless, but some people dislike the default fonts or do not have them installed.
Overleaf users: If you are using Overleaf to build your thesis, you are restricted by their choice of fonts. Please read this document for more information about which fonts are available.
The template is based on the excellent KOMA-script
class. You can thus change the appearance of many things quite easily.
For example, if you want the thesis to use the letter
paper format,
just add
\KOMAoptions{paper=letter}
in the preamble of the document and recompile.
The repository comes with an example file called Thesis.tex
. Please
take a look at this file in order for more detailed instructions about
how to use the class.
It is recommended to use latexmk
to build your LaTeX documents. Your
distribution might already have this command. If so, you can use
latexmk
in the main directory of this repository in order to build the example file.
The template uses various LaTeX packages that you should install using your favourite LaTeX distribution. Some distributions already do this automatically when you compile the document for the first time. Others require manual updates. Please refer to the documentation of your LaTeX distribution for more details.
Here is a list of packages that you need (I am using the package name as specified on CTAN):
amsmath
amsthm
booktabs
csquotes
dsfont
glossaries
graphicx
fontspec
(only for LuaTeX and XeTeX users)ifluatex
ifpdf
ifxetex
inputenc
(only for pdfTeX users)koma-script
makeidx
paralist
setspace
siunitx
subcaption
xcolor
xspace
Typesetting the example document requires an additional set of packages. Feel free to remove them, though—they are only used for showcasing how a real document might look like.
For pdfTeX users:
For LuaTeX or XeTeX users:
If you installed the packages above, everything should work automatically.
The template uses the MIT license. Please see the file
LICENSE.md
in the main directory of the repository for
more details.
The superscript citation style is not compatible with all citation
styles. For example, to use the citation with chem-angew
, please
use an adjusted \supercite
command such as this one:
\DeclareCiteCommand{\supercite}[\mkbibsuperscript]
{\bibopenbracket%
\usebibmacro{cite:init}%
\let\multicitedelim=\supercitedelim
\usebibmacro{prenote}}
{\usebibmacro{citeindex}%
\usebibmacro{cite:comp}}
{}
{\usebibmacro{cite:dump}%
\usebibmacro{postnote}%
\bibclosebracket%
}
Thanks to Carlo Botha for this contribution!
If you want a small table of contents for each chapter, update
mimosis.cls
as follows:
\usepackage[automark,headsepline,plainheadsepline]{scrlayer-scrpage}
\pagestyle{scrheadings}
\automark[section]{chapter}
\lehead*{\headmark}
\cehead{}
\rehead{\headmark}
\lohead{\headmark}
\cohead{}
\rohead*{\headmark}
\newpairofpagestyles[scrheadings]{chapter}{
\KOMAoptions{headsepline=false,plainheadsepline=false}%
\ihead*{}%
\ohead*{}%
}
\newpairofpagestyles[scrheadings]{part}{
\KOMAoptions{headsepline=false,plainheadsepline=false}%
\ihead*{}%
\ohead*{}%
}
\renewcommand*\chapterpagestyle{chapter}
\renewcommand*\partpagestyle{part}
This extension was contributed by Nikos Antoniadis in issue 16. If you want to add this as proper extension or configurable parameter, please let me know!
Does the template support bold fonts?\
\
Yes. First of all, you can change the default font (my personal
suggestion is to use the fontspec
package and xelatex
or lualatex
;
then, changing your font is as easy as using \setmainfont
). Second,
note that in older TeX distributions, the font ‘EB
Garamond’, shipped in the ebgaramond
package, does not ship
with a bold variant. Consider updating your TeX distribution or manually
replacing the font. This is not an issue with this
package—please see issue #10 for more
information.
How do I use siunitx
?\
\
The options of this package were recently updated. The setup has now
been removed to simplify the package. For the new version of the
package, the following options are suggested by Holger Dell:
\sisetup{%
mode = match,
propagate-math-font = true,
reset-math-version = false,
reset-text-family = false,
reset-text-series = false,
reset-text-shape = false,
text-family-to-math = true,
text-series-to-math = true,
}
If this does not work, you can also fall back to the older settings:
\sisetup{%
detect-all = true,
detect-family = true,
detect-mode = true,
detect-shape = true,
detect-weight = true,
}
I have a font with special support for ordinal numbers. How can I use them?\ \ The easiest way is to override the definitions and specify the required font features:
\renewcommand{\st}{{\addfontfeatures{VerticalPosition=Ordinal}\textup{st}}\xspace}
\renewcommand{\rd}{{\addfontfeatures{VerticalPosition=Ordinal}\textup{rd}}\xspace}
\renewcommand{\nd}{{\addfontfeatures{VerticalPosition=Ordinal}\textup{nd}}\xspace}
\renewcommand{\th}{{\addfontfeatures{VerticalPosition=Ordinal}\textup{th}}\xspace}
Notice that this will not work for most fonts. If you are unsure, just leave the default values in place.
I want to use standard TeX fonts, but they look weird. (See issue #29 for more details)\
\
This could be related to the encoding if you are using pdflatex
.
Either consider using a better font, such as lmodern
(to be found
in the package with the same name), or use a different encoding:
\usepackage[OT1]{fontenc}
This might cause problems when copying text from the template,
though. The better solution is to use lmodern
.
How can I ensure that the font for equations matches the main font?\
\
This depends a lot on your font selection. If you are using
xelatex
, consider using the mathspec
package. Else, check that
a package is available that provides maths support. For EB Garamond,
the unicode-math
package can be used, for instance. (See [issue
a brief discussion)
How can I remove the indent in the second line (and all following ones) of Table/Figure captions? \
\
In mimosis.cls
change \captionsetup{subrefformat=parens}
to:
\captionsetup{subrefformat=parens,format=plain}
For details see here.
How can I update the font size of citations? \
\
Check out bibliography-mimosis.tex
and update or remove
the \renewcommand*{\citesetup}
block to your preference.
I do not like some of the mathematical symbols. How can I change them? \
\
You should be using fontspec
and see whether your selected font
supports StylisticSet
. See garamond-math
for an example.
If you require additional features, find some bugs, or just have some generic inquiries, please just open an issue in this repository.
I like it!
— My mum
Garish and overproduced.
— Some rando on social media
Nice and clean!
A dream to work with! A beautiful template that just works.
— Leslie O'Bray (who was totally not coerced into writing something nice about this template)
Here is a list of contributors:
automake
and standalone
compatibility improvements\textcite
commands\supercite
for chem-angew
citation styleREADME
fileebgaramond
updateslatexmkrc
updates and fixes; hyperref
fixes