ETD ETD ETD Submission in TeX or LaTeX

Table of Contents

1. TeX and LaTeX

What is TeX? TeX is a document formatting language (and the program that processes it) written by Donald Knuth for the professional preparation of complex publications. It excells particularly at formatting mathematical equations and for managing two-dimensional presentations of data (tabular and otherwise).

What is LaTeX? LaTeX is a set of macros written by Leslie Lamport as a "front-end" to TeX that makes articles, reports, theses, dissertations, and books easy to create and manage.

The Graduate School appreciates the power of these languages and encourages students to become literate in TeX or LaTeX and prepare and submit ETDs using these tools. You will recover any time you spend learning TeX or LaTeX during the course of developing your ETD. Furthermore, this knowledge will carry forward throughout your career. You will use the knowledge you gain using TeX or LaTeX in all your future electronic publications. Please note, however, that your document must follow the standard format required by the Graduate School.

For the discussion that follows, we assume you are using the LaTeX macros.

LaTeX Environment. To create LaTeX files, all you need is an ASCII editor. LaTeX is free to download from any CTAN archive, and works on Macintosh, MS-DOS, Unix, and Windows 3.1/95/NT (though some commands may vary on some architectures).

To convert your ETD in LaTeX, first you must type your ETD into the ASCII editor using the LaTeX macros appropriately. Next run the program "latex" to generate a DVI file---from etd.latex we get etd.dvi (likewise, with program "tex" run on a TeX file---from etd.tex we get etd.dvi).

Next use the program "dvips" to convert DVI file etd.dvi into PostScript---you get etd.ps.

Finally, use the Adobe Acrobat Distiller product to convert PostScript files into PDF (Portable Document Format) files--- from etd.ps you get etd.pdf. Rename this file "etd.pdf."

VERY IMPORTANT: View this document in Adobe Reader or Adobe Exchange to see that the result is what you expected. Sometimes fonts do not translate correctly, which makes online viewing difficult.

You may use the Adobe Exchange product to add hyperlinks and bookmarks before you submit your ETD to the Graduate School.

1.1 Download TeX, LaTeX, and DVIPS

Comprehensive TeX archive (CTAN) and mirror sites:

2. A bit about Fonts

Unfortunately for our purposes, the default installation of dvips uses fonts encoded as 300dpi (dots per inch) bitmaps. This is unnoticable for printing; however, the resulting PDF files are barely legible when scaled down to today's screen resolutions (typically 72dpi). For this reason, you must modify the installation of the dvips program by substituting the appropriate scalable fonts where dvips can find them, before running dvips and the Distiller product.

The fonts and the instructions for their installation are available in two formats:

This archive contains scalable versions of the following fonts: 
  cmb10      cmcitt10   cmcti12    cmmi10     cmss8      cmti8      eusm10
  cmbsy10    cmcsc10    cmcti7     cmmi12     cmss9      cmti9      eusm5
  cmbx10     cmcsc8     cmcti8     cmmi5      cmssbx10   cmtt10     eusm7
  cmbx12     cmcsc9     cmcti9     cmmi6      cmssdc10   cmtt12     lasy10
  cmbx5      cmcsl10    cmctt10    cmmi7      cmssi10    cmtt8      lasy5
  cmbx6      cmcsl12    cmctt12    cmmi8      cmssi12    cmtt9      lasy6
  cmbx7      cmcsl8     cmctt8     cmmi9      cmssi17    cmu10      lasy7
  cmbx8      cmcsl9     cmctt9     cmmib10    cmssi8     cmvtt10    lasy8
  cmbx9      cmcsltt1   cmcu10     cmr10      cmssi9     euex10     lasy9
  cmbxsl10   cmcss10    cmcyr10    cmr12      cmssq8     eufb10     lasyb10
  cmbxti10   cmcss12    cmcyr12    cmr17      cmssqi8    eufb5      lcircle1
  cmcb10     cmcss17    cmcyr17    cmr5       cmsy10     eufb7      lcirclew
  cmcbx10    cmcss8     cmcyr5     cmr6       cmsy5      eufm10     line10
  cmcbx12    cmcss9     cmcyr6     cmr7       cmsy6      eufm5      linew10
  cmcbx5     cmcssbx10  cmcyr7     cmr8       cmsy7      eufm7      logo10
  cmcbx6     cmcssdc10  cmcyr8     cmr9       cmsy8      eurb10     logo8
  cmcbx7     cmcssi10   cmcyr9     cmsl10     cmsy9      eurb5      logo9
  cmcbx8     cmcssi12   cmdunh10   cmsl12     cmtcsc10   eurb7      logobf10
  cmcbx9     cmcssi17   cmex10     cmsl8      cmtex10    eurm10     logosl10
  cmcbxsl1   cmcssi8    cmff10     cmsl9      cmtex8     eurm5      msam10
  cmcbxti1   cmcssi9    cmfi10     cmsltt10   cmtex9     eurm7      msbm10
  cmccsc10   cmcssq8    cmfib8     cmss10     cmti10     eusb10
  cmccsc8    cmcssqi8   cminch     cmss12     cmti12     eusb5
  cmccsc9    cmcti10    cmitt10    cmss17     cmti7      eusb7

3. LaTeX Tutorials

NB: BibTeX is a handy bibliographic tool for use with LaTeX.

4. Automatic Hyperlinking

Certain extensions to LaTeX are available that generate PDF hyperlinks automatically. These are available from any CTAN archive under systems/tex2pdf. First, you must install the tex2pdf software, then insert special macros into your LaTeX file. When you ultimately generate the PDF file using pdftex, the hyperlinks you have declared will appear in it---between bibliographic references citations, from figure references in the text to figures, from table references to tables. One may even include external hyperlinks to Web pages.

Unfortunately, pdftex is still experimental software... but if you have a minute, you may want to give it a try.

5. See Also

etd.lsu.edu

LSU Graduate School

This page was last updated: 01/03/05
Questions? Comments? gradetd@lsu.edu