UMinho Thesis Template

UMinho Thesis Template is a LaTeX template for academic works formatted according to the rules for doctoral theses, master's dissertations, internship reports, and project reports from the University of Minho officially published in "Despacho RT-31/2019". It is recommended to read the official documents in UMinho Thesis Official carefully and check whether modifications to the formatting rules currently in this template have been recently introduced.

Below you can find a tutorial with a sequence of steps to help you adapt this template to your work, and more instructions are provided in the included files. Please follow the steps and ensure the template compiles without errors after the necessary changes are made according to the instructions.

---

Typesetting and compilation

• This template uses LaTeX typesetting and requires pdflatex and bibtex commands for compilation.

• In main.tex is where everything is included and contains instructions and steps to guide through the template.

• Make sure you have LaTeX installed on your computer and run the command pdflatex main on the command line to compile the source code and generate the PDF document.

• In most LaTeX editors (Texmaker, MiKTeX, etc.), shortcuts from buttons exist for that purpose and usually need to be run from the main file (main.tex).

• Compiling twice is required for cross-references of figures, tables, equations, etc., to be correctly generated and referenced in the generated PDF document.

• Executing the bash script makemain.sh for cross-references of bibliography entries to be correctly generated and referenced in the generated PDF document.

• The recommended desktop LaTeX editor is Texmaker and the recommended collaborative online LaTeX editor is Overleaf.

• This template can be cloned directly to your Overleaf account from the associated Overleaf project.

---

Structure and organisation

• In preamble/, the template formatting rules with the necessary packages and commands are defined. These files should not be usually modified at the risk of breaking the document format. If certain packages and commands, other than the ones already included and defined in the template, are necessary to meet specific the needs of your document, consider doing so in main.tex.

• In covers/, the covers and title pages of your document are provided. The SVG files provided should be edited as necessary with your personal information (the recommended software is Inkscape) and then exported to the same folder in PDF format. These PDF files are directly included in the document rather than generated from a LaTeX source.

• In preliminaries/, the required and optional first pages of your document are provided (as established in the official formatting rules). The LaTeX source files should be edited as necessary with your personal information.

• In bibliography/, the bibliographic references of your document are stored. There are several approaches for bibliography management with LaTeX and only one of these LaTeX source files should be edited according to your personal choice.

• In chap1/ and chap2/, the contents of each chapter of your document are stored. These LaTeX source files should be edited with the contents of your work, whereas chap1.tex and chap2.tex are provided as examples and correspond to two different chapter formats.

• In appendices/, the contents of each appendix of your document are stored. These LaTeX source files should be edited with the contents of your work, whereas appendixa.tex and appendixb.tex are provided as examples.

---

Custom font

• The official font for the doctoral theses and master's works from the University of Minho is NewsGotT, which is already installed for LaTeX in preamble/newsgott/, with the TFM files already generated from the TTF sources provided officially.

• If these files need to be regenerated, you can execute the bash script makefont.sh (the ttf2tfm utility needs to be installed on your computer).

---

Preamble

% document title
%\def\doctitle{}
% document title
%\def\docauthor{}
% document language
%\def\doclanguage{portuguese}
% formatting rules
\input{preamble/preamble}
% nomenclature list
%\input{preliminaries/nomencl}
% bibliography with Sortedbib
%\input{bibliography/references2.tex}
% convert chapters into sections
%\convertchaptersintosections
% customise title fonts
%\chaptertitlefont{}
%\sectiontitlefont{}
%\subsectiontitlefont{}
%\subsubsectiontitlefont{}
%\paragraphtitlefont{}

---

Covers and title page

• Covers and title pages used in this template are generated outside LaTeX and then included in the compiled PDF document.

• Templates for the covers in SVG format for doctoral thesis and master's works are provided, which can be edited with the appropriate software (Inkscape, etc.) and then saved in PDF format.

• Make sure the official font (NewsGotT) is installed on your computer before editing the cover templates (the source font files are provided in UMinho Thesis Official for installation).

• Choose below the cover and the title page for your work (doctoral thesis or master's work) and comment/uncomment the predefined selection as necessary.

• Edit the corresponding SVG files available in the covers folder with your personal and work data as necessary (author name, work title, work date, academic course, supervisor's names, etc.).

• Save in the same folder the edited SVG files in PDF format (only change the extension).

• Additional covers for other UOEIs are provided in UMinho Thesis Official in AI format to be edited and converted to PDF format and saved in folder covers/.

% front and back covers
% doctoral thesis
\includepdf[pages=-,fitpaper,landscape=true]{covers/doctoral_front_cover.pdf}
\includepdf[pages=-,fitpaper,landscape=true]{covers/doctoral_back_cover.pdf}
% master work
%\includepdf[pages=-,fitpaper,landscape=true]{covers/master_front_cover.pdf}
%\includepdf[pages=-,fitpaper,landscape=true]{covers/master_back_cover.pdf}
% title page
% doctoral thesis
\includepdf[pages=-,offset=0 -0]{covers/doctoral_title_page.pdf}
% master work
%\includepdf[pages=-,offset=0 -0]{covers/master_title_page.pdf}

---

Preliminaries

• The following pages are required to be included in the doctoral theses and master's works, except for the acknowledgements and the publications and awards sections.

• Comment out the line of the acknowledgements and the publications and awards if you do not want them to be included in the generated PDF document.

• Open each of the files below, edit the personal and work data as necessary, and follow the instructions provided to complete the required information.

• The template automatically generates a table of contents and lists of figures, tables, and nomenclature for your work.

• Choose below the indexes to be generated and comment/uncomment the predefined selection as necessary. For instance, if your work has no tables or you do not want them to be indexed in a list of tables, comment both the commands \dominilot and \listoftables, otherwise an empty list will be generated.

% preliminaries
\preliminariesformat
\input{preliminaries/redistribution}
\input{preliminaries/acknowledgements}
\input{preliminaries/statement_of_integrity}
\input{preliminaries/resumo}
\input{preliminaries/abstract}
\input{preliminaries/publications_and_awards}
% table of contents
\dominitoc
\tableofcontents
% list of figures
\dominilof
\listoffigures
% list of tables
\dominilot
\listoftables
% nomenclature
\printnomenclature

---

Chapters and sections

• There are two formats for the chapters (plain chapters and article chapters), which you can choose from the provided templates below.

• Plain chapters have their sections beginning on the same page as the title, article chapters have an abstract and keywords on the first page while sections begin on the next page.

• Article chapters are more appropriate when your work is based on articles or when you want to include a general introduction/motivation to the topic before actually starting to develop it.

• Each chapter corresponds to a different folder named chap1, chap2, chap3, etc., where the necessary sections, bibliography, figures, etc. are included for the sake of organisation.

• You can find below a template for a plain chapter (chap1) and an article chapter (chap2) that should be edited with the contents of your work and duplicated to create new chapters for your document.

• Open each of the chapters below and follow the instructions provided.

% Chapter 1
\chapterformat
\input{chap1/chap1.tex}
% Chapter 2
\chapterformat
\input{chap2/chap2.tex}

---

Bibliography

• There are several approaches for bibliography management with LaTeX and this template includes three options (Bibitems, BibTeX, and SortedBib), which you can choose from the provided templates below

Bibitems

• Bibitems consists of a list of bibliography items supplied with the command \bibitem, which later can be referenced with the command \cite{}.

• It is the simplest approach to creating a bibliography for your work, but you have to manually format the bibliographic entries according to the style you chose.

• Moreover, the reference numbers are attributed according to the order they are provided to LaTeX (and not according to the order of citation), and all the bibliographic entries are present in the references section of the generated PDF document, even if they are not cited.

• Compiling with pdflatex twice is required for cross-references of bibliographic entries to be correctly generated and referenced in the generated PDF document.

% bibliography with Bibitems
\bibliographyformat
\begin{thebibliography}{1}
\input{bibliography/references1.tex}
\end{thebibliography}

BibTex

• BibTeX consists of a bibliography database of formatting independent information of the references for the work.

• Each bibliographic entry has a given type (article, book, proceeding, etc.) to determine the automatic formatting of the reference in the generated PDF document.

• Moreover, the reference numbers are attributed according to the order they are cited (and not according to the order they are provided to LaTeX), and only the cited bibliographic entries are present in the references section of the generated PDF document.

• Compiling with the sequence pdflatex, bibtex, and finally pdflatex twice is required for cross-references of bibliographic entries to be correctly generated and referenced in the generated PDF document.

• Several bibliography files can be provided to the command \bibliography{} separated with commas, and the file extension .bib is required for the bibliography databases.

% bibliography with BibTeX
\bibliographyformat
\bibliography{bibliography/references.bib}

SortedBib

• SortedBib is similar to Bibitems, but the command \bibitem{} needs to be replaced with \addbib{} and the command \cite{} needs to be replaced with \citebib{} (you need to perform these changes in this template if you choose to use SortedBib).

• It keeps the simplicity of the Bibitems approach of creating a bibliography for your work, but the reference numbers are attributed as in BibTeX, that is, according to the order they are cited (and not according to the order they are provided to LaTeX), and only the cited bibliographic entries are present in the references section of the generated PDF document.

• Compiling with pdflatex twice is required for cross-references of bibliographic entries to be correctly generated and referenced in the generated PDF document as for Bibitems.

• Although it avoids the compilation complexity of the BibTeX approach, you still have to manually format the bibliographic entries according to some style you chose as in Bibitems.

• The bibliography file needs to be provided with the command \input{} placed before the command \begin{document} and after the preamble.

% bibliography with Sortedbib
\bibliographyformat
\begin{thebibliography}{1}
\printbib
\end{thebibliography}

Individual bibliography

• Separating the bibliography by chapters is useful when each chapter needs to have its own bibliography (see further instructions in the template chapters provided).

• The corresponding references are included at the end of each chapter in a separate section and, in that case, BibTeX needs to be used since the other approaches are not capable of producing the same results.

• The compilation becomes more complex as several stages are required and, therefore, executing the bash script makemain.sh is easier than manually executing all the compilation steps required.

• If using individual bibliographies for the chapters, leave commented out all the commands provided for the bibliography in main.tex and uncomment the corresponding commands provided in each chapter.

% individual chapter bibliography
\chapterbibliographyformat
\nocitechapi{*}
\bibliographystylechapi{unsrt}
\bibliographychapi{chap1/include/sections/bibliography.bib}

---

Appendices

• Appendices should appear after the bibliography and should be named "Appendix A", "Appendix B", and so on in the order that the information is mentioned in the document.

• Appendices can be introduced as regular chapters with sections, subsections, subsubsections and paragraphs and can contain figures, tables, and equations.

% Appendix A
\appendixformat
\input{appendices/appendixa.tex}
% Appendix B
\appendixformat
\input{appendices/appendixb.tex}

---

Suggestions

Any suggestions for improvements or bug fixes to this template can be sent to me via e-mail.