I wasted a few days of my life figuring out this stuff, and unlike many Pines things, I will try to make it easier for the rest of y'all so you too do not have to reinvent the wheel.

Here is our generic thesis Latex style files and templates to start creating your thesis. There are two separate possible formats. The first is a pdf, the second is the latex dvi. If you live on a Windows machine you should get MikTex and use the cmd.exe to run the latex commands. MikTex comes with a DVI viewer to make simple placement viewing easier. Finally, the UC has got some rules about submission, which you can find here.

A nice editor for Latex and Windows and Miktex is the WINEDIT program...it has a rough equation editor, spell checker, refernce lists, etc.

On ye old OSX i'd say TEXSHOP is the best editor, and this handy installer package guy, I-INSTALLER As it gets and installs all those things you need to get latex running on the mac (which there are ALOT)

To view postscripts, and convert images, etc... you'll need GhostScript...

Finally, you perhaps will want ones thesis bound. The two places are...
1) Copy Central will bind for ~$12 but of 'mild' quality
2) Pettingell Book Bindery 2181 Bancroft Way (just west of Oxford), Phone: (510) 845-3653
will do 'nicer' ones (the ones with th gold leafing and things) for ~$65

• The files you need (get all of them here (tar.gz))
  • LATEX FILES
    • ucthesis.cls --> the basic Latex 2e class file...this is now in the master LATEX world under here so it is much past 2002, check this site to see if there has been an update to this.
    • uct10.clo, uct10.sty, uct11.clo, uct11.sty, uct12.clo, uct12.sty --> the file size font metrics
    • upref.sty --> a AMS math font to make sure references in Math mode are still 'normal' font
    • fancyhdr.sty--> make nice little headers to your pages
    • code.sty --> Makes 'code/algorithms' examples as float and indexable like figures or tables
    • thrpttab.sty --> "Three Part Table" Allows for footnotes in tables (but is kinda a pain to use)
      The moral is not to use footnotes in tables if you can help it...
    • lblthesis.sty--> LBNLs style file for thesis, sadly for Latex 2.09, which will cause a mess if use use commands only in Latex 2e...it requires the ucthesis font metric files
    • prsty.bst --> 'pretty' Bibliography styles for BibTex
    • plain.bst --> 'plain' Bibliography styles for BibTex
    • custom-bib.tar.gz--> Dr. Logan pointed me to this little custom bibliography style creator...untar it and read the readme....
  • SHELL SCRIPTS
    • make.sh --> run via './make.sh {name}' where {name} is the name of the document. It simply runs latex, bibtex, latex, latex in that order to get all the references processed correctly.
      Output is a "dvi" file.
    • pmake.sh --> run via './pmake.sh {name}' where {name} is the name of the document. It simply runs pdflatex, bibtex, pdflatex, pdflatex in that order to get all the references processed correctly.
      Output is a "pdf" file.
    • eppdf.sh --> the pdflatex command requires that all figures be PDFs themselves. This script takes in a directory name and will convert ALL .eps files into .pdf files using the "epstopdf" command in that directory. Use via './eppdf.sh {myDir}' where myDir is the directory of images you wish to convert.
  • LATEX TEMPLATES
    • thesis.tex --> this is the 'master' file. This file makes sure to include all the necessary packages and commands and chapter files in your thesis. You should edit this file as you see fit.
    • frontmatter.tex --> This is the basic template for all those little things like the title, signing pages, abstract, acknowledgements, dedications, etc. This is the first thing to edit and include in thesis.tex.
    • mychapter.tex --> a silly little file that shows you all the various commands to make tables, figures, sections, etc.
• To Make a PDF
  • I would only make the pdf as your last step, as 1) the images you have will not be in the correct format and 2) this is much slower then the normal latex dvi producer.
  • Make sure that you have removed the master ".aux" file if you use 'latex' before. If your master document is 'thesis.tex' then you probably have a 'thesis.aux' is you have run latex. This file is in the wrong format and will confuse the pants off of 'pdflatex' so remove before you use pdflatex, or the 'pmake.sh' script.
  • All images and figures must be PDFs themselves. But for the dvi format they should be eps files. The script 'eppdf' converts all the eps files in a given directory to pdf files using the 'epstopdf' binary which needs to be in your path somewhere.

Theses of previous students (pdf files):

Bo Blanton (5.7 Mb)
John Logan (2.8 Mb)
Jamie Walls (9.1 Mb)
Bob Havlin (3.6 Mb)