Typesetting and Style

Despite the generic title, this page actually discusses typesetting with LaTeX. It is rather difficult to get anywhere near LaTeX's standards of quality with any other package, especially when it comes to mathematical or technical documents, so we strongly recommend it for your thesis.

Choosing an Editor

While any text editor will do, you should find one that has special LaTeX support, such as syntax highlighting and macro completion. There are two main options we recommend. One is to use Overleaf, an online service for which ETH also grants you premium access. As with all online services, it is good to frequently keep backups (for example if the service is down near your submission deadline). One downside of Overleaf is that it is as of the time of this writing impossible to do cross-file searches. For this reason, you might consider splitting your LaTeX code to only few files, if not one.
The other one is to use VScode along with the LaTeX workshop extension (obtainable via the extensions tab in VScode).
An important step in setting up the extension is to modify the compilation recipe used. In particular, keep only the pdflatex -> bibtex -> pdflatex * 2 recipe.
For both options, a useful tool is synctex (already included). This allows you to jump to the pdf location of a given source code line and vice versa. For Overleaf one simply has to double click on a passage (code or pdf). For the LaTeX workshop, ctrl+click goes from pdf to code and ctrl+alt+j goes from code to pdf.

Getting LaTeX

If you don't only use Overleaf, you will also need to install LaTeX on your system. Depending on your operating system, we recommend the following:

• Windows: use MikTeX.
• OS X: use MacTeX.
• Linux/*nix: your distribution's package management system should offer TeXlive for installation. To make sure you do not run into issues with missing packages, we recommend getting the full version (in the order of 6-7 GB). For example, you can execute "sudo apt update" followed by "sudo apt install texlive-full" on Ubuntu.

Yes, TeX is that big. Most of it is actually font data. You can in some cases get a stripped down distribution that omits some packages and fonts (by e.g. replacing texlive-full with texlive, texlive-extra, texlive-science, etc.)

Thesis Template

We recommend that you use our thesis template. It supplies most of the basic structure required for a thesis, includes a lot of comments about the packages used, contains some tips about typesetting math and should get you started very quickly.

Learning LaTeX

Finally, you'll have to learn the language. Tobias Oetiker et al., The Not So Short Introduction to LaTeX, is a good starting point. Next, since you'll presumably use a lot of math, read the AMS documentation which describes some of the most used equation layouts. The AMS packages are always distributed with LaTeX.
Between these two, you should be able to start writing your thesis. The following documents will prove useful as you proceed:

• Winston Chang's LaTeX cheat sheet is a very helpful reference for LaTeX commands.
• The Comprehensive LaTeX Symbol List lists all sorts of weird, arcane, or mathematical symbols. The title is spot on; if it isn't in there, it most likely doesn't exist yet. Bookmark it.
• Bibliographies are usually handled with BibTeX, which is part of every TeX distribution. Wikipedia has a nice overview of BibTeX. Your LaTeX environment of choice should handle the compilation side.
  To collect the entries with minimal fuss, browse to Google Scholar. Click "Settings" on the left sidebar and under "Search Results" enable "Show links to import citations into" and choose BibTex in the dropdown. Then try an arbitrary scholar search; it will show a link "Import into BibTeX" below the search hit. Click it and copy the entry into your .bib file, voila. However, keep in mind that sometimes the format is not consistent. It can happen that one citation refers to a conference in one way and another does so completely differently. You should keep an eye out for such inconsistencies and manually fix them.

Style and Art

• There is a nice collection of Knuthian wisdom which covers most of the issues that involve mathematics at all.
• The Chicago Manual of Style is the preferred style guide for American English.

Further reading

These may not have a direct relevance to your thesis, but it still good to know about them.

• Presentations: the beamer package (usually comes with LaTeX) is one option to make slides in LaTeX. See the comprehensive beamer documentation. Classical presentation software like Powerpoint or Keynote are options that also have (many) advantages. The only real downside is the lack of native LaTeX support, but this can be fixed. For Keynote, LaTeXiT is a great tool. For Powerpoint, use IguanaTex. Both options are viable, but be warned that making engaging and intuitive presentations using beamer is usually a lot more difficult and time-consuming.
  
• It is actually possible to generate graphics especially graphs, commutative diagrams, etc. right in LaTeX. TikZ (usually packaged with LaTeX) is the tool of choice. See some examples here and here.

Questions and Feedback

Please contact Kostas Lakis if you have any questions, feedback or corrections.