LTHthesis: for PhD, Lic Tech, and MSc theses at Automatic Control

\documentclass{LTHthesis}

The standard class for all PhD, Lic Tech, and MSc theses at Automatic Control. Template. Technical reports may also use LTHthesis, or the class LTHreports described below.

It is based on the class memoir, but you should not have to read any of its almost 600 pages manual. The packages graphicx, amsmath, ntheorem and biblatex are implicitly included.

Special features of LTHthesis

Sectional divisions

The sectional commands, (\part, \chapter, \section) have the form \section[toc-title][head-title]{title}, where the optional arguments have the following meanings:

  • No optional argument: the title text is used for the division title, the ToC title and the running head title.

  • One optional argument: the title text is used for the division title; the toc-title is used for the ToC title and the running head title.

  • Two optional arguments: the title text is used for the division title; the toc-title is used for the ToC title; the head-title is used for the running head title.

Titlepages

The titlepages are the first two (possibly four, if there is a \dedication) pages of the thesis. They are specified according to this example: 

  \begin{titlepages}
    \author{Pelle Pettersson \and Anna Almgren}
    \title{A Very Important Contribution to the Theory}
    \subtitle{The First Attempt}   % Optional
    \year{2013}
    \type{Licentiate Thesis}       % The default is 'MSc Thesis', so you will want to set this
    \reportnumber{9999}            % The thesis number. Check with Mika.
    \ISBNprint{long number}        % The ISBN number for a printed publication (only for PhD theses)
    \ISBNweb{long number}          % The ISBN number for web publication (only for PhD theses)
    \printer{MediaTryck}           % Probably MediaTryck, check with Mika.
    \dedication{To my mother}      % Optional.
    \extrainfo{Extra information}  % Optional. Will be placed on the second page,
                                   % above the thesis type and number 
  \end{titlepages}
The order of the various entries in your source code is irrelevant. The printed order will be determined entirely by the class.

If the thesis belongs to another department, there are some extra commands available. This little section is not relevant for Automatic Control.

   \department{Department of Computer Science}
   \series{LU-CS-DISS}
   \ISSN{1404-1219}
Bibliographies

As mentioned above, this class implicitly uses biblatex instead of the traditional bibtex. The main reason for this is that it makes multiple bibliographies quite easy. The typical use in the main document would be as follows:

  \documentclass{LTHthesis}
    ...
    \addbibresource{mybibA.bib}  %only one per command
    \addbibresource{mybibB.bib}
      ...
  \begin{document}
   ...
  \printbibliography
  \end{document}

One typical example of multiple bibliographies is when you want to mention a small number of your own publications at the beginning of a thesis, and still have the main bibliography at the end. The use would then be 

\begin{refsection}
\nocite{publKey1}
\nocite{publKey2}
\nocite{publKey3}
\printbibliography[heading=none]
\end{refsection}

The default sorting order in the bibliographies is alphabetical by authors. If you want another sorting order in a short extra bibliography, then this is achieved by the environment  \begin{refcontext}[sorting=none] ... \end{refcontext}  enclosing the part where you want a special sorting order.

When you then run latex or pdflatex on the main tex-file, there will be some information at the end of the output instructing you to run biber on some special files which are named. Please do so.

Papers

Many theses contain reprints of research papers published elsewhere. The method to include these papers is shown in the following example: 

   \begin{papers}
   \paper{My First Paper}
   \authors{Pelle Pettersson \and Nisse Nilsson}
   \begin{abstract} abstract text \end{abstract}
   \vfill
   Originally published in xxx. Reprinted with permission.
   \newpage
   text text text
   \printbibliography[heading=subbibliography]
   \paper{My Second Paper}
   etc. etc
   \end{papers}

In a paper the local bibliography is printed where the command \printbibliography is given. The local bibliography is automatically limited to the \cites given inside the paper.

Note that you must move any commands givent in the preamble of the original paper to the preamble of the thesis, and also remove the \documentclass of the original paper.

The first line of the paper, \paper{My First Paper}, follows the same rules as was specified for sectional divisions above.

Subcaptions

The \subcaption command is similar to the \caption command and can only be used inside a float environment. It typesets an identified subtitle, where the identification is an alphabetic character enclosed in parentheses. The subcaption is typeset within a box which is the width of the surrounding environment, so \subcaption should only be used within a fixed width box of some kind, for example a minipage.

In order to use \subcaption, the surrounding float type must be specified via the command \newsubfloat in the preamble, i.e. between \documentclass and \begin{document}. The typical specification would then be \newsubfloat{figure}

Note that \subcaption makes packages like subfigure, subfig, caption etc. unnecessary, and they are in fact counterproductive.

Bibliography options
There are some options for the class which have to do with bibliographies. It is strongly recommended to use the class defaults, but the options are listed here for completeness.

  • [biblatex=none]

    The thesis does not contain any bibliography information, and we may therefore save a few seconds for each LaTeX run.

    [biblatex=numeric]

    Use a numbered bibliography instead of the default author-year.

    [biblatex=bibtex]

    The default backend is biber, but this option allows use of the traditional bibtex backend.

    • The rules for PhD dissertations at LU prescribe that along with the dissertation proper, there should also be a popular science summary. It should preferably be in Swedish, although an additional translation into English and/or the author's native language is quite reasonable. Here is a template for the Popular Science Summary

    Registration sheet and document datasheet

    Templates for these documents are here. The registration sheet (Swedish: spikblad) contains information such as title, author name, faculty membership, dissertation time, and premises. The document datasheet contains information on the thesis. The registration sheet and document data sheet can be printed on opposite sides of the same paper, of which a copy is to be inserted in every copy of the thesis.

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