foleyj2 / ru-thesis Goto Github PK

Currently we don't use Babel or Polylang to deal with our multilanguage support.
This is to avoid the hard-to-debug \ML macro issues from the previous template.
The areas to consider: titles, abstracts, keywords, citation formats

Some disciplines need APA style citations. How do we make it easy for them in this template?

At least the packages rcs, lineno, and beamer require a date command with a single argument. Other packages redefine date with a single argument. This is annoying, since it may break the compilation or leave random junk in the document.

Deadlines are currently listed as T-X where T is graduation.
It would be nice if this could be made to easily update by setting the graduation date.
The old template used an Excel spreadsheet.

CS Project Reports (and EngineeringX) write documents using the template with multiple authors.
Let's make sure this works well.

There is a PDF with the appropriate department and degree names.

The current format list it like so:

• Contents ---- iii
• List of Figures ----- v
• List of Tables ---- vi
• I Getting started ---- 1

Suggestion to change it to either include all "pre" chapters or non at all.

(I can do the change)

There will be people using Google Docs and Word to write their thesis no matter what we do.
At a minimum, we should be able to have this system indicate what the margin settings for MS Word/Libreoffice would be to have similar output.

Hyphenation is the reason you should never use MS Word with Icelandic.
(it is also why everyone uses ragged-right with Icelandic instead of properly justified)
We need some demonstration of how to make Icelandic hyphenation work.

Right now the setup assumes A4 stock, cut to B5. (with cut marks)
To make things less confusing, probably we should just have the default be B5 since the print house should be able to deal anyway.
I think that the way kthesis does this is probably the right solution: their main .cls file disables all but a4paper and b5paper options with an error message.
We set b5paper as the default and add a comment to help people understand what is going on.
Optimally, some contacts Haskolaprent and Svansprent to find out how they prefer the document for their uses.
Tasks

• Reuse code from kthesis in new rubook.cls
• Add explanation at top of main.tex
• Call an Icelandic printhouse to find out what works for them
• Set default to b5paper

The document

\documentclass{rubook}
\usepackage{ruthesis}
\usepackage[german,english]{babel}

\begin{document}

\end{document}

fails to build since our class files already load babel. Thus, we cannot use the standard interface to add languages.

@mkyas tells me that there may be RU Teaching Affairs requirements. In addition, we know that various attempts at a "fancy cover" have been done.

The instructions were outdated 3 years ago. Need to make sure the various elements meet the current requirements.

From Issue #5 , we need to minimize work by standardizing our build tool rather that supporing *TeX
Marcel suggests luatex since many of the more powerful tikz capabilities depend upon it.
I'm fine for that. Tasks:

• Test the current code with luatex
• Make sure Icelandic works properly with luatex
• Update documentation and magic comments (emacs, TeXstudio) to use luatex
• Give some examples to show why people should bother using luatex

The cover hasn't been compared to the reference example yet.

When you use \printedcover{} (for PhD Dissertations) it sets the font for the rest of the document to sans serif. We need to have it go back to the original font, usually serif.

There is often a request for a MS Word template. We will not invest effort into this because MS Word's support for Icelandic is poor: you cannot get it to hyphenate Icelandic words, so full-justification always looks bad.
Interestingly enough, OpenOffice/LibreOffice can deal with Icelandic hyphenation and spelling and has better control over formatting in general.
See the branch "msword" for initial investigations into this.
It would be nice if someone tried converting the current style of the template into a native Open/Libreoffice template.

The dissertation.tex template may be redundant since most of the functionality has been rolled into main.tex. Investigation needed.

The packages textpos and TikZ do not work well together. See the textpos documentation and https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/66804/unexpected-output-using-tikz-textpos/66853#66853

TikZ is hugely important to CS students.

So I understand that some committee members have to sign the thesis. However, the rules allow some variety:

"The thesis committee shall consist of 3-5 scholars who are active participants in the research community and recognised experts in the relevant field of study." and "The thesis committee and one or more examiners together form the thesis defence committee. One or more examiners shall be appointed to participate with the thesis committee in the doctoral thesis defence. The examiner(s) shall be recognised authorities on the topic of the dissertation, preferably from a foreign institution."

https://en.ru.is/research/rules-on-doctoral-studies/

The issue is that we can run off the page if we arrive at 8 signatures.

I understand that we need paralist to typeset the signatures page. On the other hand, enumitem has many more features. Should we investigate enumitem?

We may want to facilitate flexible use of these templates. We could define a standard class file that requires a bunch of style files to implement the desired features.
The current version uses macro names defined by other packages. It also requires packages that are not needed in CS.

Icelandic names are a pain in citations because of the non A-Z characters.
We need to evaluate how well each system deals with it. Ragna Björk should probably be consulted too.

In the current template, it is not breaking paragraphs across pages.
This is particularly apparent on chapter starts, where there significant gaps between the paragraphs.