This is a set of skeleton files that will help you create a University of California dissertation using LaTeX. It's built on the venerable "ucthesis.cls" file, but adds key improvements to track changes in the thesis formatting guidelines as well as many other improvements.
It's named "ucastrothesis" since the files and lore originate in the UC Berkeley Astronomy Department, but the setup will be applicable to anyone that uses LaTeX with small changes.
The key files that you need to look at are:
setup.tex, where you enter boilerplate info like your thesis title.thesis.tex, where you put toplevel LaTeX definitions, include packages, and write your abstract, dedication, and acknowledgements.intro/intro.tex, a template thesis chapter.Makefile, which defines the rules for how the thesis is compiled.
The intended file structure is for each chapter to have its own subdirectory where all of the necessary files are kept, and then to keep miscellaneous text and other thesis-wide resources in the toplevel directory (which is the one containing this file).
The Makefile is set up so that you can just type make to compile
your thesis as a beautiful, rules-compliant PDF. Typing make all will
also generate the signature page upon which your committee will put
their precious, precious marks.
The Makefile contains an example of using the powerful
dependency-tracking features of make to generate auxiliary files as
you compile your thesis. Add a file to the "deps" variable if it
needs to be created before compiling your thesis; add it to "cleans"
if it can safely be deleted to force regeneration of all your thesis
files (via make clean).
Things will probably go the most smoothly if you take the time to
learn a bit about how latex, make, and git work.
The xetex branch of this repository includes support for compiling your
thesis with the XeTeX engine rather than standard
LaTeX. The main benefit of this is that XeTeX supports modern fonts much
better than classic LaTeX; in this author's judgment, you can do much better
than standard LaTeX with a well-chosen font (Times New Roman, or Libertine
on Linux). XeTeX also lets you use Unicode characters (such as: é Å ☺)
directly in your document. See the XeTeX homepage, or
Google for more information.
Copyright 2012 Peter Williams
This file is free documentation; the copyright holder gives unlimited permission to copy, distribute, and modify it.