TeX, LaTeX & UIC Thesis Resources

Most likely you are already using LaTeX to prepare quizzes and handouts for classes, possibly to write up your homework, and maybe you have even have written a paper based on your research. When it comes time to write up your thesis, you must decide: to TeX or not to TeX. For a Masters Thesis, some are written in Word, but most are written using LaTeX; for a doctoral thesis, essentially all are written using the LaTeX typesetting system. It offers so many advantages, compared to the short term trials & tribulations of learning this system.

If all you need are the thesis macros, look below. The sample Abstract file (using the uicthesi format) is in the precise format required by the Graduate College. The rest of this page is for those students just starting out to learn this system, or those still mastering the "Art of TeX'ing".

 

UIC Thesis Resources

If all you need are the style files for UIC Thesis, these are linked on the Thesis Resource page here, or below:

 

Installing the TeX System

"TeX is a way to typeset complex mathematical formulae. It has been noted as one of the most sophisticated digital typographical systems in the world."

If you have a moment, first read more on the wiki about TeX (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TeX) and LaTeX (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaTeX) - it gives some fascinating background information. Also read more about "What is Tex?" from the TeX Users Group (TUG) website.

TeX is already installed on your account with the math department servers. Just log in to math.uic.edu, and type "tex" or "latex" in a shell window, and the machine will ask for more. But if you want to install the TeX system on your own PC or laptop, the full TeX implementation for Windows, Mac & Unix operating systems is free. The most sophisticated (and recommended) installation version is now called "TeXLive".

Unix - start here: www.tug.org/texlive/quickinstall.html
Mac - start here: http://www.tug.org/mactex
Windows - start here: www.miktex.org

The TeXLive insallation is huge! For example, MacTeX-2008 is a 1.2 GB disk image. After the download, installation can take an hour or more to run. The TeXLive download package includes fonts for gazillions of languages too.

After the TeX system is installed, you will wonder "where is the TeX?" - it is a system of compiled programs and style files hidden in the /usr directory on your system. To use these programs, you can either run them from a Terminal shell window, running the command "tex" or "latex" or "pdflatex" on a text file written in the proper format (see below), or most folks prefer to use a "TeX editor" which makes TeX'ing much, much simpler.

For unix systems, some prefer using the emacs editor, which is a universal editor of immense power.

For the Mac systems, THE preferred TeX editor is call TeXShop, and it is a free download from www.uoregon.edu/~koch/texshop. You can also use the venerable BBEdit (or its free cousin TextWrangler) to work with TeX files .

For the Window systems, the standard TeX editor is WinEdt, which works seamlessly with the MiKTeX 2.5--2.7. This is a shareware program. However, there is not such universal agreement over which TeX editor is best. Here is another option - the LEd (LaTeX Editor) for Windows. And if two choices are not enough, browse the wiki for more.

There is a huge installed base of TeX programs for all systems, some of it free, some not. For example, this Vanderbilt site list many free TeX related programs available for Windows systems. For Mac systems, check out the TeX on Mac OS X wiki.

Whatever - Just Do It - download TeX and get started.

 

TeX How-To Guides & References

There are two ways to learn TeX system - one approach is to read more about it, and the starter guides below will let you do just that.

One aspect of working with TeX or LaTeX is that there are many arcane commands to create math symbols or "environments". The following are some very handy guides to be printed out, which you keep by your computer when TeX'ing. At some point you will probably buy a book on LaTeX, just to have something to look up how to "TeX" something, like a complicated mathematical expression, or place a graphic in your document. It is a worthwhile investment.

Of course there are other books out there, and multiple online sources for learning TeX. So much so, that it can be easier to just "jump right in", and pick it up as you go.

 

TeX Starter Files

The second approach to learning the TeX system is to just start with a given LaTeX file, and check that your tex installation works by compiling it, to get a pdf document as output. Then you start modifying the document to see what happens... At some point, you then grab one of the tutorial books to figure out what went wrong, and fix it. Then iterate; say for the next 20 years or so. Here are some sample documents to start out with.

The last two examples illustrate how the look of a document can change, using differing format styles. There is article style, amsart style, letter style, and many others. In fact, when you submit a LaTeX document to a journal, they may require that you typeset it in their own customized style format.

For example, the AMS TeX Resources Home Page has links to the format styles required for their books and journal. Here is the page for their journals.

Once you get the hang of using LaTeX, you might want to try writing a paper in math. One source of examples of papers in TeX is the Math arXiv, which has approximately 100,000 math papers posted, in pdf format, along with the TeX or LaTeX source file used to produce it. If the document has graphics included, then you will download a zip file which uncompresses into a folder containing the source file, and any related graphics files.

 

October 14, 2009 - Return to home