LaTeX Independent Study Template

LaTeX files for Independent Study at The College of Wooster

Quick Start

1. Open main.tex
   • Comment the \documentclass declaration on line 25 and uncomment the declaration on line 34 and adjust the options to use what you need for your IS (see exampleis_manual.pdf for the available options)
   • Edit the information around the \title declaration on line 96
   • Edit the abstract on line 140
   • Edit the dedication on line 149
   • Edit the acknowledgements on line 159
   • If you do not have publications then comment out lines 197 through 200
   • Comment out line 230 if you do not have a Preface
2. Chapters are stored in the chapters folder
   • Edit the contents of the chapters/introduction.tex and other chapters to have your IS text
   • If you have more than three chapters just make a new file called chapter#.tex and put %!TEX root = ../main.tex (line 1) \chapter{your chapter title}\label{yourchapterlabel} (line 2) as the first and second line of the file
     • Uncomment lines 251 through 255 in main.tex as needed
   • The Introduction is labeled as Chapter 1 in the IS
3. Images are stored in the figures folder
   • The allowed file types are JPEG, PNG, TIFF, and PDF
   • Use the command \woopic{picturename}{scalingfactor} to include your picture
     • File names cannot have spaces in them and the scaling factor must be between 0 and 1
     • See Chapter 3 in the exampleis_manual.pdf for examples of including figures
4. Appendicies are stored in the appendicies folder
   • Comment out lines 266 through 270 of main.tex if you do not have any appendicies otherwise edit the appendix title after the / to be the title of your appendix document
5. Source code to be included in the IS is stored in the source folder
   • Source code can be included using \lstinputlisting[caption=caption text, label=labeltext]{source/filename}
   • See Chapter 2 of exampleis_manual.pdf and appendicies/cpp.tex or appendicies/java.tex files for examples of including code in an IS
6. References are in the references.bib file
   • Edit this file to have your references

Info

This project aims to provide you with a template for typesetting your IS using LaTeX. LaTeX is very similar to HTML in the sense that it is a markup language. Instead of worrying about the formatting of elements, the woosterthesis class takes care of several elements so that students only need to identify the structure of their IS. Students should read exampleis_manual.pdf document before writing, as the manual explains how to use all the custom options available, with particular attention to the Introduction.

Dependencies

The woosterthesis class loads several packages by default and several others through class options; it is assumed you have these installed on your system. These include the following:
alltt | amsfonts | amsmath | amssymb | amsthm | babel | biblatex
:———:|:—————:|:————-:|:————-:|:————:|:———-:|:———-:
biblatex-chicago | caption | csquotes | eso-pic | eucal | eufrak | fancyhdr
float | floatfl| fontenc | fontspec | geometry | graphicx | hyperref
ifpdf | ifthen | ifxetex | inputenc | lettrine | listings | lmodern
makeidx | maple2e | microtype | pdftex | polyglossia | pxfonts | setspace
subfig | textpos | TikZ | verbatim | wrapfig | xcolor | xltxtra
xunicode

The woosterthesis class also assumes you are using pdfTeX (support for postscript based TeX has been dropped as of 2006/17/11).

Usage

The template has been tested with Overleaf, as well as TeXLive installs on OS X and Windows 11. Some students have reported receiving processing time warnings from Overleaf and a request to move to a paid subscription, for that reason I recommend using a locally installed TeX instance instead of a cloud-based one.