Choosing the Right Tools for Writing Your Thesis

Cay S. Horstmann

Why Should You Care?

• What's wrong with using Word like a typewriter?
• Numbering
  • Your advisor: “Add the paper by Anderson et al.”
  • Ugh—that's now paper [1], so [1] needs to become [2] and [2] needs to become [3] and ...
• Styles
  • Your advisor: Use a narrower font for the computer code.
  • Ugh—there are hundreds of “Courier New” that now need to change into “Lucida Sans Typewriter Condensed”.

Example 1 | 2

Why Should You Listen to Me?

• I wrote 18 books (together 50 editions over 25 years)
  • Two editions per year
• I wrote a word processor for scientific publications
  • Way back when, before there was a Mac or Windows

Styles

• A section of your document that should be formatted in a specific way
• The “specific way” may change
• Font face/style/size, margins/padding, numbering
• Never apply formatting directly
• Always use a style
• When you change the style, all tagged elements update automatically
  • Headings
  • Code
  • URLs

Code

• Code can appear inline: the main method
• Or displayed:

  public static void main(String[] args)
  

• Code is in a monospaced font
• But not Courier New
  • It's too wide
• Choose a condensed font with the same x-height as the body font
  • Consolas/Monaco/Inconsolata are ok
  • Or better, condense your own
• Don't use color coding for keywords, numbers

Math

• Math can be inline: a = π r²
• Or displayed: $$\underset{-1}{\overset{\mathrm{+1}}{\int }}\frac{dx}{x}$$
• Math letters are italic
• But numbers are not
• Special symbols
• Need special tools for two-dimensional layout
  • Caution: Make sure that tool generates same fonts as for inline symbols

Example 1 | 2

Special Characters

• Accented characters: San José
• Greek letters: π
• Operators: ≤
• Em-dashes and curly quotes—“like this”
  • Caution: You don't want them in code!

    n--; return "Ok"; // and not n—; return “Ok”;

• Ligatures: ff fi fl ffi ffl

Counters

• Section numbers
  • 1.
  • 1.1.
  • 1.2.
• Separate counters for tables, figures, literature references
• Counter references—see Section 1.2, as shown in Table 4
• Should update automatically when sections are inserted/moved

Figures and Tables

• Figures and tables have captions
  • Figure/table number
  • Title
• Figures and tables are large
  • When they don't fit on a page, they need to float to the nearest page top or bottom
  • Caution: That's not the same as “floating” in Word or HTML, where text flows around a figure.

Literature References

• IEEE style cites literature references as [1], [9, 13]
• ACM style: [Burando 2007a], according to Burrando [2007a]
• Go for the ACM style if you can—no renumbering
• Use a tool to generate properly formatted citations (Word bibliography, BibTeX, Mendeley)

Choose a Platform

• Word
• LaTeX
• A markdown variant
• HTML/CSS

Word

• WYSIWYG/WYSIAYG
• Not optimized for structured documents
• But usable for a thesis with care and discipline
  • Be sure to use styles and counters
• Support for math and page layout is weak
• Collaboration is good (provided your collaborators have an Office 365 account)
• Versioning is weak

LaTeX

• Esoteric markup

  \begin{document}
  E &= \frac{mc^2}{\sqrt{1-\frac{v^2}{c^2}}}

• Excellent support for math, page layout
• Required for publishing in many CS journals
  • If your advisor tells you to use it, use it.
• Has a definite learning curve, so get going early.

Markdown and Friends

• Lightweight markup

  Heading
  =======
    * apples
    * oranges
    * pears
  

• You know it from Github, StackOverflow, ...
• Markdown itself doesn't have the power to write a thesis
• AsciiDoc/AsciiDoctor has a complete toolchain to handle complex documents
• Drawback: The rules get tricky

  \*Stars* will appear as *Stars*, not as bold text.
  \§ will appear as an entity, not the § symbol.
  \\__func__ will appear as __func__, not as emphasized text.
  \{two-semicolons} will appear {two-semicolons}, not resolved as ;;.

HTML/CSS

• You know HTML/CSS for web pages
• CSS has a specification for printed pages
• http://www.princexml.com/ PrinceXML can render PDF
• CSS can do styles (duh), cross-references
• MathML or MathJax can do math
• Downside: A bit off the beaten track
• Upside: You'll need to learn this stuff anyway

Conclusion