This thesis was originally designed for bachelor's and master's theses at Ulm University, but can be easily adapted to other universities and, e.g., doctoral dissertations. This readme serves several purposes:
- Setting Up:
Explain how you can set up your own thesis repository based on this template - Quickstart:
Give a quickstart explanation on how to get started writing your thesis (including best practices) - Full Reference:
Provide a more thorough reference of the commands and environments provided by the template
See the ai-rules-uulm.md for the rules regarding the use of AI in theses specifically at Ulm University.
Originally, I (Florian) created the basis of this template for my bachelor's thesis and minified it on request for my master's thesis. Even though I invested a lot of effort since then to make it standalone (and much, much, much easier to use), there are still some parts that are not as polished as they should be (and many modules not ported).
If you encounter any problem, please write me an email or open an issue! The same holds for feature and documentation request, do not hesitate to open a new issue!
The main idea of using this thesis is in a clone-and-own fashion. So you may either
- fork (GitLab, GitHub) this repository (or have it forked by your supervisor), or
- create a new repository (GitLab, GitHub) initialized with this template.
We prefer forking, as it allows you to keep the history of the template and directly pull in changes from the template (if you want to).
In case you want to use this template as a submodule or within another directory (e.g., because you do not want a separate repository for the thesis) please see the alternative setup section below.
The quickstart assumes you use the sample structure provided in this repository, including the sample files.
The template has the following structure, only the thesis.cls and the _config folder are essential for the template to work. The remaining files represent an example structure:
/
| - thesis.tex # The main file for your thesis
| - thesis.cls # The document class for the thesis
| - segments/ # A place for the segments of your thesis
| - README.md # This file
| - literature/ # A place for your bib file(s)
| - img/ # A place for your images
| - .latexmkrc # The configuration for latexmk
| - .gitlab-ci.yml # The CI/CD pipeline
| - .gitignore # Standard gitignore
| - _config/ # The internals of this template
Please note that the segments are just a generic suggestion, it is probably best to discuss the best structure with your respective supervisor.
It is up to you and your supervisor whether you want to use the structure provided in this template (especially with regard to the files in the segments folder).
In general, we block the thesis.pdf and a signature image (see the declaration of authenticity module) from being committed to the repository (.gitignore) and even if you rename that main file you should refrain from pushing compiled (blobs/) files to the repository to avoid cluttering it.
However, to persist your final state in an easily accessible way, we encourage you to (at least at the University of Ulm) upload the compiled version of your final and submitted thesis to this repository as well.
Please use the format <Surname><Firstname>-<Type>.pdf for the file name, where <Type> is either BachelorThesis or MasterThesis (e.g., SihlerFlorian-MasterThesis.pdf).
For more information on the actual submission, please consult your supervisor (FAQ Page of Ulm University).
Everything of importance regarding metadata resides within the thesis.tex file.
Right at the start, when loading the document class, you can set the type of thesis to either bachelor-thesis or master-thesis:
\documentclass[
% ...
type=bachelor-thesis, % master-thesis
% ...
]{thesis}Afterward, go to the "important metadata" section (which should start with the line % == Important Metadata) to set your
- title (
\title, preferably in title case), - name (
\author), - title image (
\titleimage), - supervisor(s) (
\supervisor), and - examiner(s) (
\examiner)
Great, you should be now up and ready to write your thesis! Look at the most important commands or the example segments (e.g., the introduction) to get started.
In case you want a multi-line title (or decide yourself where to break the title line), use the \nl command which inserts a newline at a point of your choosing (this still inserts proper spacing in the metadata).
There is only a small number of commands that you should know when working with this theses, everything else is packaged in what we call modules which you can load (\ThesisModule) if you want functionality and styling which was useful for thesis writers before you. These modules provide you with styled support for glossaries, pseudocode, listings, and more (see the included modules).
- Links:
We use the cleveref package to provide you with the\crefcommand for linking. So instead of\label{marker}...\autoref{marker}you can use\label{marker}...\cref{marker}. If you want to link to a specific section, you can use the\linkcommand:\link{sec:mysec}{Super Text}. If you want to link to a specific section and do not want the link to be highlighted, you can use\link*{sec:mysec}{Super Text}(hyper references module). - Chapters:
Before each chapter, you can use\setchaptertocto have a mini table of contents in the sidebar. After starting each\chapter, you can use\csummaryto provide a summary of the chapter in the main table of contents (chapter module). Additionally, thesummaryenvironment is intended to be used at the start of every chapter to provide a short overview of what is to be presented in the chapter. This environment does minor space compensation and prohibits references from occurring in the sidebar (to avoid clutter). - Sidebar:
This theses often writes into the sidebar and you may find that unhelpful or annoying from time to time, you can use\disablesidetrueto disable all sidebar writing commands from now on (and\disablesidefalseto re-enable them). If you just want to disable it for a set of commands, you can also use\noside{...}(marginpar module).
Besides those, there are many others, for example, the units module provides you with a nice and easy way to typeset SI units.
Below you can find various more thorough references to the commands and environments provided by the template.
These are currently untested so please let me know if you encounter any problems.
If you use this thesis as a submodule, you can update it using the following command:
git submodule update --remote --merge <path/to/the/submodule>To get started, you probably should copy several files and folders, essentially everything except the thesis.cls file and the _config folder which compromise the template itself.
Now adapting the path the the loaded document class, setting the \thesisProfilesPath{...} should be enough to get the template to work (yet, depending on what you copy, setting the configpath document class option may suffice too, see the common module for more information).
If you move the complete template to your own directory, there is technically nothing that has to be changed!
You just may want to update the .gitlab-ci.yml file (moving it to the root folder and changing the working directory within) so it is still in effect and builds the thesis for you. To have the link to the latest build in the readme work, you should update the path to reflect wherever the build is stored.
If you still want to receive updates there is no "automated" way so you probably have to do it via patches.
You can create a patch from the template repository using git diff > myPatch.patch and apply it to your repository using git apply myPatch.patch.
Please note, that you require perl to compile the document if you want to have a glossary (it should be part of texlive). The makeglossaries command does not work without it.
Any (pdf-)LaTeX compiler should have no problem in compiling the document (even if that is in the context of the LaTeX Workshop extension for VS Code or the TeXStudio editor). For ease of use, we have included a .latexmkrc for the latexmk to compile the document.
With it, simply running latexmk should give you the thesis, latexmk -c should perform a (small) cleanup and latexmk -pvc should continuously compile the document (useful for live previews). If at any point you need to force a recompile, either use latexmk -g or latexmk -gg to retry.
The thesis offers built-in support for LuaLaTeX (although pdflatex is recommended and the priority) and it is up to you to change the respective engine within your IDE. For the .latexmkrc you should update the pdf mode from $pdf_mode = 1; to $pdf_mode = 4;.
The template provides an profile option for the document class, which defaults to uulm-sp (at the time of writing this is the only option that works).
This corresponds to an similarly named folder in _config/profiles which contains the specific settings for the specific university (logo, coloring, configuration overwrites, titlepage, ...).
So if you want to make your own definitions, it is probably best to clone-and-own this folder, adapt the settings to your needs, and then set the profile in the document class to your profile. If you want this to remain reusable, feel free to contribute your profile to this repository.
Most modules are more and less modular so while they may rely on the built-in set, most of them should be adaptable outside of the thesis context. In the following list you can see which modules are included by default (✓) and what they provide.
You can load the other modules by using, for example, \ThesisModule{authenticity} command in the preamble of your document (the sample structure should load some of those for you). If you have something that you want to contribute, feel free to open a pull request!
| Module | Description | (Internal) Source | |
|---|---|---|---|
| ✓ | <Common> | Common commands for the thesis | thesis.cls |
| Declaration of Authenticity | Provide a page to sign that you created this thesis of your own work | authenticity.tex | |
| ✓ | Bibliography Support | Provide support for a bibliography | biblatex.tex |
| ✓ | Chapters and Minitocs | Styles the chapters, their summaries, and tocs | chapter.tex |
| ✓ | Colors | Provide a set of colors for the thesis | colors.tex |
| ✓ | Useful Environments | Provide a set of hopefully useful environments (abstract, acknowledgements, ...) | environments.tex |
| ✓ | Floats | Configure the styling of floating elements (figures, ...) including their counter | floats.tex |
| ✓ | Fonts | Configure the fonts used in the thesis | fonts.tex |
| ✓ | Footnote | Footnotes that appear in the sidebar | footnote.tex |
| Glossary | Provide support for a glossary | glossary.tex | |
| ✓ | Headers and Footers | Configure the headers and footers | headfoot.tex |
| ✓ | Hyper References | Configure the hyper references | hyperref.tex |
| ✓ | General Layout | Configure the general layout (including widow handling) | layout.tex |
| ✓ | Licensing | Provide license information | license.tex |
| Listings | Provide support for code snippets (using the xlistings backend) | listings.tex | |
| ✓ | Margin Paragraphs | Configure the content of the margin | marginpar.tex |
| ✓ | Page Layout | Configure the page layout | page.tex |
| Pseudocode | Provide support for pseudocode | pseudocode.tex | |
| ✓ | Tables | Configure the styling of tables | tables.tex |
| ✓ | Titlepage | Styling for the titlepage | titlepage.tex |
| ✓ | Translations | Provide translation support for the template/document | translations.tex |
| Units | Provide support for (si-)units | units.tex |
The common module resides directly within the main thesis.cls file and provides the basic functionality (document class options, loading of modules, ...). We list the document class options below. As we are based on the Koma-Script class scrbook, you can use all options provided by this class together with the scrhack and scrwfile package. Everything provided by etoolbox is also available.
All Document Class Options
Of course, not all options are equally important. Those of importance are at the top of the list:
| Option | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
citeInMarginpar |
true | If set to false, citations will not appear in the marginpar (see bibliography support). |
draft |
false | If set to true, the document will be compiled in draft mode (showing overfull boxes, ...). |
enhanceMath |
true | Load advanced math fonts (see fonts). |
license |
CCBY | The license to use for the document (see licensing). |
pageInFloatRef |
true | This automatically activates the effects of the floats module. If you set this to false you get the default LaTeX numbering. |
profile |
uulm-sp | The profile to use for the document (see the profiles). |
type |
master-thesis | The type of the thesis (either bachelor-thesis or master-thesis). |
verbose |
false | If set to true, the document will be compiled in verbose mode (showing more information in the log and more detailed error messages). |
| --------------- | --------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
beramono |
true | If set to false, the document will be compiled without the beramono font (see fonts). |
configpath |
_config | The path to the configuration files (relative to the main document). |
digital |
false | This complements the print option, if set to true, the document will be compiled in digital mode. |
fira |
true | If set to false, the document will be compiled without the fira font (see fonts). |
fontsize |
10pt | The font size of the document (only change when agreed with your supervisor). |
hyperref |
true | If set to false, the document will be compiled without hyper references (complements nohyperref, see hyper references). |
nohyperref |
false | If set to true, the document will be compiled without hyper references (complements hyperref, see hyper references). |
oneside |
true | If set to true, the document will be compiled in oneside mode (complements twoside). |
palatino |
true | If set to false, the document will be compiled without the palatino font (see fonts). |
paper |
a4 | The paper size of the document (only change when agreed with your supervisor). |
print |
false | If set to true, the document will be compiled in print mode (complements the digital option). |
rmtitle |
true | If set to false, the document will be compiled with a sans-serif title (see fonts, complements sftitle). |
sftitle |
false | If set to true, the document will be compiled with a sans-serif title (see fonts, complements rmtitle). |
twoside |
false | If set to false, the document will be compiled in oneside mode (complements oneside). |
Tree-View of these Options
The following shows the configuration options in a tree-hierarchy:
flowchart TD
template(Template)
template --- meta{{meta}}
template --- layout{{layout}}
template --- output{{output}}
template --- font{{font}}
template --- references{{references}}
output --- target{{target}}
output --- draft("`<code>draft</code>`")
target --- print("`<code>print</code>`")
target --- digital("`<code>digital</code>`")
meta --- license("`<code>license</code>`")
meta --- profile("`<code>profile</code>`")
meta --- type("`<code>type</code>`")
meta --- verbose("`<code>verbose</code>`")
meta --- configpath("`<code>configpath</code>`")
layout --- citeInMarginpar("`<code>citeInMarginpar</code>`")
layout --- paper("`<code>paper</code>`")
layout --- pages{{pages}}
pages --- oneside("`<code>oneside</code>`")
pages --- twoside("`<code>twoside</code>`")
font --- beramono("`<code>beramono</code>`")
font --- fira("`<code>fira</code>`")
font --- enhanceMath("`<code>enhanceMath</code>`")
font --- fontsize("`<code>fontsize</code>`")
font --- palatino("`<code>palatino</code>`")
font --- title{{title}}
title --- rmtitle("`<code>rmtitle</code>`")
title --- sftitle("`<code>sftitle</code>`")
references --- hyperlinks{{hyperlinks}}
hyperlinks --- hyperref("`<code>hyperref</code>`")
hyperlinks --- nohyperref("`<code>nohyperref</code>`")
references --- pageInFloatRef("`<code>pageInFloatRef</code>`")
Besides this, the common module provides some useful commands:
\ThesisModule{<name>}: Load a module (if available) for the thesis.\InputFrom{<path>}: Add a path to the input path (so you do not have to specify it in the\inputcommand). For example,\InputFrom{segments}allows you to use\input{introduction}instead of\input{segments/introduction}. This may also help when using the template as a submodule or from a different directory.
Include the authenticity module with \ThesisModule{authenticity}.
We usually require a declaration of originality/authenticity for the work conducted in the thesis. This module provides a page for you to sign that you created the presented work within this thesis of your own work.
The main macro \makedeclarationofauthenticity automatically inserts this page at the end of document, ready for you to be signed.
To digitally typeset the date and location, you can set them like this:
\setdeclarationlocation{Ulm}
\signaturedate{2025-12-30}If you want to provide a digital signature too, you can use the \signature command:
\signature{path/to/signature.png}📜 Recommended Handling of Signatures
By default, the .gitignore excludes files like
signature.pngorsignature.jpegto prevent them from being accidentally committed to the repository. So we recommend you name the signature file accordingly and place it in the root folder of the thesis:\signature{signature.png}If you choose to use a different name or location, you should update the .gitignore file accordingly. In general, do such things at the end of your thesis.
All in all the text we generate is just a suggestion, you can use the declarationofauthenticity environment to typeset your own text at a position of your choosing:
\begin{declarationofauthenticity}
% Your text here
\end{declarationofauthenticity}By default, we translate the declaration-of-authenticity string defined as part of the translations module to the respective language.
Please be aware, that you should use either the environment or \makedeclarationofauthenticity but never both.
This module essentially provides the recommended package of biblatex and csquotes for the bibliography using biber as the backend.
The common commands like \addbibresource, \cite, and \printbibliography work like normal but interplay with the margin (by default that is).
If you want bibliography support, but do not want cites to appear in the margin, you can set the document class option citeInMarginpar to false:
\documentclass[
% ...
citeInMarginpar=false,
% ...
]{thesis}Even without disabling this setting, this module provides you with the \plaincite{...} macro which does not write the citation in the marginpar (\noside{...} and \disablesidetrue work as well).
If on the other hand you want to willfully force a citation to appear in the sidebar, you can use the \forcecite{...} command. And, if you just want to have a cite appear in the marginpar, you can use the \sidecite{...} command.
As a side-effect, this module provides the \enquote{...} command by the csquotes package which allows you to easily typeset texts within context-sensitive (and language dependent) quotes.
For more information, please see the documentation of the biblatex and the csquotes package.
This module configures the look and feel of chapters, sections, and other structural elements of the document. Using the documentclass option sftitle allows an alternative take on this styling (which I personally dislike, but you may like it) using a sans-serif font for the titles. There are just a few new commands (you can use \chapter, \section, ... as usual):
\setchaptertocbefore a chapter will add a mini table of contents to the sidebar.\csummary{...}after a chapter will add a summary to the main table of contents. Within this summary, you can use the\csumnextmacro to add a new line.
By default, this module provides the colors supplied by the xcolor package. However, it is also responsible for loading the profile-specific colors (if available).
For an example, have a look at the color definition of the uulm-sp profile in the _config/profiles/uulm-sp/colors.tex file with its primary color RGB(163,38,56) (named @primary) for the SP institute.
Originally, this module provided much more, a huge collection of macros which the original author (me ✨) found useful in his thesis. However, as these require a lot of getting-used-to,they have been removed from this setup. What remains are four environments (which you can find in the aforementioned master thesis as well):
abstract: Provides an abstract section for the document.acknowledgements: Provides an acknowledgements section for the document.conventions: Provides a conventions section for the document.rqs: Provides a research questions enumerate list (which can be nested)
This module uses the caption and the subcaption package to configure the styling of floating elements (figures, tables, ...). It also provides the subfigure environment to group figures together.
For example, it causes figures and tables to follow a non-standard numbering scheme which uses the page number as well as the occurrence count of a float of that type on that page. While this sounds complicated, Figure 13A simply states that this is the first figure on page 13, Figure 13B would be the second, and so on (fight me on this being a much better naming scheme for floats).
If you (for whatever unfathomable reason) dislike this scheme, the document class option pageInFloatRef can be set to false to revert to the default LaTeX numbering.
This still leaves you with the tools to register your own (see below), but disables the automatic hooks into the float environments.
You can use the float environments (figure, table, ...) as well as captions (\caption, ...) as usual. Usually we try to place captions for figures below the graphic, while we place captions before/above tables.
Figure Example
\begin{figure}
\centering
\begin{tikzpicture}
\draw (0,0) -- (1,1);
\end{tikzpicture}
\caption[The Divider]{The great Divider of the Universe, separating the good from the bad.}
\label{fig:divider}
\end{figure}The caption will be the long version ("The great Divider of..."), while the list of figures will only show the short "The Divider" caption alternative. Within your document, you can refer to the figure using \cref{fig:divider} or \namecref{fig:divider} (which will print "Figure 13A" or "The Divider" respectively).
Table Example
\begin{table}
\caption{A simple table}
\begin{tabular}{cc}
\toprule
A & B \\
\midrule
1 & 2 \\
3 & 4 \\
\bottomrule
\end{tabular}
\label{tab:simple}
\end{table}Usually, the caption is placed above the table, to take the role of a "title". Similar to the figure, you can refer to the table using \cref{tab:simple} or \namecref{tab:simple}.
See the tables module for more information on tables.
At the moment, we have no detailed guide about how you can register your own floats to the new page ref counting mechanism. In short you have to use \InitPageCounter{<float>} with (ideally) the name of your floating environment, add a new hook which uses \CountThisPage{<float>}{c@<float>@lb} to count the floats at the begin of the environment (usually with something like \AtBeginEnvironment{<float>}{\HookCustomEnvCount{<float file ext>}{<page count hook>}}) and provide a counter rendering (\the<float> which usually relies on \@formatcounter). The pseudo module provides an example for this, registering the pseudo float (see the pseudocode.tex file).
This module, surprise, loads the default fonts used in this document and provides you with a semi-bold font-weight (accessible with the commands \sbseries and \textsb{...}).
By default (and this is good believe me), we rely on old-style figures (also known as text figures) for numbers in the text. You can recognize them by the fact that they are not all on the same height and some of them even have depth (have a look at the 3 which hangs below the baseline).
If you do not like this (even only in a given scope), the \LiningFigures command switches to lining figures. As is usual, this happens automatically in tables (and math mode).
In case you require a lot of math, the enhanceMath document class option updates the \mathcal style.
If you are interested in the fonts used, have a look at the fonts.tex file (they can be configured with the document class options beramono, palatino, and fira).
This module simply causes footnotes to appear in the sidebar and to reset their count for each chapter. Additionally, footnotes should automatically backlink to the place where they were referenced.
As an (opinionated) addition, the module also provides the \footurl{<url>}{<date>} command to typeset a footnote with a URL and the date of access (which I personally find of importance):
See the website of ulm university\footurl{https://www.uni-ulm.de}{2024-12-24} % 🎄Similarly, \foothref{<url>}{<text>}{<date>} can be used to create a footnote for, e.g., an archived link which shows shortened in the sidebar (if it is too long etc):
\foothref{https://web.archive.org/web/20241221140233/https://www.uni-ulm.de/}{https://www.uni-ulm.de/}{2024-12-21}This will show only https://www.uni-ulm.de/ in the sidebar but link to the web archive version.
Include the glossary module with \ThesisModule{glossary}.
Combining the glossaries-accsupp and the glossary-longragged package, this module provides (margin paragraph aware) support for glossaries. You can use all glossary commands as usual.
The default setup provides you with normal glossaries, acronyms, and symbols ("notation"),
have a look at the default segments/glossary.tex file provided for sample definitions, and the segments/introduction.tex file for a sample usage. Similar to the bibliography module,
\noside{...} and \disablesidetrue can be used to prevent glossary entries from appearing in the marginpar. Additionally, \sidesymbol{...} can be used to place a symbol (only) in the marginpar. Especially to show multiple symbols we offer \showsymbols{...,...,...} (which may be followed by an optional star to force their appearance).
Besides those changes there is another, arguably opinionated change, which I (at least used to) feel relatively strongly about: custom replacement texts. If i have a glossary entry, for let's say "dataflow analysis" and I want to quote it in another context where "dataflow" suffices (e.g., in "dataflow and control flow analysis"), glossaries usually require you to either print the full term or to use one of their user fields to overwrite the text.
With this module, you can use brackets after the \gls command to overwrite the text: \gls{dataflow-analysis}[dataflow] will appear as a link named "dataflow" in the text, but still reference the full term in the glossary. While glossaries offers \glslink and \glstext for this purpose (and they should be readily available to you if you choose), I was never able to befriend them.
This module loads the scrlayer-scrpage package of the Koma-Script bundle and configures the scrheadings page styles, as well as the page number.
The module used to provide a lot of linking shinannigans, but currently they have been not ported (as there was no demand).
Hyper references allow you to link to other parts of the document or to external resources and they may be disabled by setting the hyperref option to false or passing the nohyperref option to the document class (although, to be honest, I have not needed this option for a long time).
Loading the hyperref, bookmark, hypcap, nth, varioref, and cleveref package, there is already a plethora of macros you can use (icons are enabled by fontawesome):
\cref{<anchor>}: The main reference command, use it instead of\autorefand\ref(cleveref).\href{<url>}{<text>}: The usual href command (hyperref)\label{<anchor>}: The usual label command.\link{<anchor>}{<text>}: A command to link to a specific section, the second argument is the text that should be displayed. If you do not want the link to be highlighted, you can use\link*{<anchor>}{<text>}.\nth{<number>}: The default ordinal number command by nth (more or less a side effect of the ref styling).\phantomsection: A command to create a phantom anchor point (by default, a\labeldoes not create an anchor and so, references to it will jump to the last anchor created).\sideref{<anchor>}: Essentially the command automatically issued by\crefto place the corresponding reference in the sidebar.\url{<url>}: The usual url command (hyperref with the url package).
The footnote module additionally provides you with the \footurl{<url>}{<date>} and \foothref{<url>}{<text>}{<date>} commands to create footnotes with URLs and dates of access.
This module primarily configures the skips for paragraphs, indentation, and how to deal with orphans, there are no new commands or environments of interest!
This module provides the license banner line which can be used by the titlepages module to display the license of the document. By default, we currently only offer the CCBY, CCBYSA, CCBYNC, and CCBYNCSA licenses, but feel free to request whatever you desire.
To add a license the approach is relatively straightforward:
Go into the license.tex file and add a new macro of name \thesis@license@<LICENSE>, you should already find a license like \thesis@license@CCBY there.
Then, the macro has to do two things: provide a translation for the license text (see the translations module) and provide the icons to be used by defining the macro \thesis@license@symbols (the ccicons package is favailable to provide the icons).
Include the listings module with \ThesisModule{listings}.
If you load the listings module you gain all features provided by the xlistings package, which in turn relies on the listings package to provide you with a set of helpful commands to typeset code snippets. If you know listings you are theoretically already set to go, however, there are some macros you should know about (besides advantages like automated highlighting of numbers and unselectable line numbers thanks to the accsupp package):
-
Load a language of your choice using
\LoadLanguages{<language>}(e.g.,\LoadLanguages{R,java}). -
A
mintedenvironment similar to that of the minted package:\begin{minted}[autogobble]{R} x <- 3 print(x) \end{minted}
-
With
\xlstlangoverride{<lang>}{<keys>}you get language sensitive overrides:\xlstlangoverride{R}{ morekeywords={example,bexample}, add to literate={:pi:}{\(\mathcolor{red}{\pi}\)}{1} }
-
The
add to literatekey allows you to add new literates (i.e., replacements) for your listings.
The xlistings package is part of this template under ./_config/xlistings.sty, if you want to update it for your template instance, you may want to use the ./_config/update_xlistings.sh shellscript.
The margin paragraphs module has the base control of over the sidebar, using a combination of the mparhack (fixes for marginpar), ifoddpage (to detect page counts), and ragged2e package (for improved ragged writing), as well as either the cheaper marginnote package (if in draft mode) or the scrlayer-notecolumn package (supports column breaks). Although we load this plethora of packages, there are just a couple of commands that you should know about:
\sidenote[<yshift>]{<content>}typesets the content into the margin.
The starred variant\sidenote*[<yshift>]{<content>}relies on\makenote*when using the scrlayer-notecolumn package and prevents the expansion of the content. These commands can be nested (which may appear accidentally) but may need additional passes to work, if you do not want nesting to appear, you can add a\disablesidetrueto the\thesissidebarhook(see below).\setmarginfont{<font>}to set the font and color used in the margin.
You can use\marginfontto access the current font (with scrlayer-notecolumn there is technically thenotecolumn.marginparkoma-font too, but this is not realiable withdraftmode)\noside{...}disables\sidenote(s) commands in its argument
You can use this to suppress automatic margin comments as introduced by commands like glossary entries or citations.\disablesidetrueand\disablesidefalsecan be used to disable and re-enable the margin comments in a region of your choice (even if this is the complete document)\thesisinverseraggedcan be used within the\sidenotecontent and reverses the automatic ragging of the text.\thesissidebarhookis a mccro which contains something that is to be executed within every sidebar note and you may use either\appto\thesissidebarhook{...}or\preto\thesissidebarhook{...}to append or prepend content to the hook.
This module uses the geometry package to configure the main layout of the thesis (papersize, ...), applying binding correction, margins, marginpar width, and the like. There are no new interesting commands that you should know about(/use) and if there are not clear requirements by your university, it is recommended to leave the layout as is.
Include the pseudocode module with \ThesisModule{pseudocode}.
This module relies on algorithm2e to provide you with the capability to typeset pseudocode. As a side effect of registering a new pseudo float that you can use to that matter, it loads float and newfloat as well.
Doing that yuo can typeset an algorithm like the following, in the document, you can reference inidivudal lines using \AlgoLineRef{<label>}:
\begin{pseudo}[tbp]
\caption{Sample Float Caption}
\label{fun:good-algo} % label to reference the algorithm
\begin{algorithm}[H] % typeset an algorithm within the pseudo float (use `H` to fix)
\PreCode % for definitions before the actual algorithm
\Input{x :: String}
\Output{y :: String}
\Output{z :: String}
\StartCode % for the main algorithm
\lIf{x \KwIs "hello"}{
\label{alg:important-line}\Return{"world"}
}
\While{true}{
\If{y \KwIs "world"}{
\Return{"hello"}
}
}
\Return{"goodbye"}
\end{algorithm}
\end{pseudo}We do not do a lot of magic with tables, besides what we configure in the float module. In short, we load the array, booktabs, tabularx, and longtable packages providing you with great commands such as \toprule, \midrule, and \bottomrule to create beautiful tables. Please have a look at the respective package documentation (especially that for booktabs) or have a look at the sample introduction.tex file.
The titlepage module defines the commands you can use to configure metadata (\examiner, \titleimage, ...) and loads some packages useful when creating the titlepage (graphicx, ragged2e, enumitem, and tabularx).
Yet, behavior wise there is not a lot of magic going on here.
We overwrite the \maketitle command (and extend it with an optional argument you can use to specify the page number your titlepage should have: \maketitle[2] starts with page 2).
Besides this we provide the full-titlepage environment which may then be used by the profiles (see the Adapting for Other Universities or Institutes section and the profile option).
If you want to know the details, see the uulm-sp/titlepage.tex file for an example of a titlepage configuration.
This module uses the translator package to provide many translations for various strings throughout the document, automatically set to the language of your document. You can use the \translate command to access these translations, however, you probably do not have to.
Include the units module with \ThesisModule{units}.
This module loads and configures siunitx to provide you with a set of commands to typeset units and numbers (please read the siunitx documentation for more information). In short, you can use \qty{<number>}{<unit>} to typeset a quantity, \num{<number>} to typeset a number, and \unit{<unit>} to typeset a unit. For example: \qty{3.14}{\meter\per\second}.