latex-mimosis: A minimal & modern template for your thesis

This repository contains a minimal & modern LaTeX template fordissertations and other university documents.

For the impatient or curious: this is what the template lookslike.You may also want to take a look at my my Ph.D. dissertation, which uses a predecessor of this template.

Users

Before going over the details of this template, why not look at how itlooks in practice? The following documents have been typeset with thistemplate (or a slightly modified variant of it):

• S. Almasian, Learning Joint Vector Representations of Words and Named Entities, M.Sc. thesis, Heidelberg University, 2018
• K. Hanser, Visualization of Coherence in Meteorological Data, M.Sc. thesis, Heidelberg University, 2018
• P. Jung, On the Frame of Reference in Flow Visualization, M.Sc. thesis, Heidelberg University, 2019
• B. Rieck, Persistent Homology in Multivariate Data Visualization, Ph.D. thesis, Heidelberg University, 2017

Advantages

This template aims to be…

• clean: no LaTeX trickery
• minimal: no unnecessary adjustments and decorations
• modern: typographically pleasing

It is specifically suited for the European education system because ituses A4 paper size by default—this can be easily adjusted to fityour personal needs, though (see below).

The class is based on KOMA-script, so it should beflexible enough to suit virtually any purpose.

How to use

If you are using Overleaf, download latex-mimosisin the gallery. If you want to use the template locally, follow thesesteps:

• Clone this repository
• Copy the file mimosis.cls into your document directory
• Add \documentclass{mimosis} to your document preamble
• Optionally copy the file Thesis.tex and the files in Sources asa starting point
• Use latexmk to build the document
• Write a nice thesis in LaTeX

While you can customise everything to your heart's desire, you shouldprobably start with changing the fonts. I strongly recommend to usexelatex or lualatex to build the document, as this will make fontselection almost trivial. Essentially, you only require these threecommands (I took the liberty to specify some example fonts):

\setmainfont{Baskerville}
\setsansfont{IBM Plex Sans}
\setmonofont{IBM Plex Mono}

Put these commands in your main file such as Thesis.tex and be sure toremove this code block here:

\ifxetexorluatex
  % ...
\else
  % ...
\fi

Note that the document will work fine nevertheless, but some peopledislike the default fonts or do not have them installed.

Overleaf users: If you are using Overleaf to build your thesis, youare restricted by their choice of fonts. Please read this documentfor more information about which fonts are available.

How to customise

The template is based on the excellent KOMA-scriptclass. You can thus change the appearance of many things quite easily.For example, if you want the thesis to use the letter paper format,just add

\KOMAoptions{paper=letter}

in the preamble of the document and recompile.

Example

The repository comes with an example file called Thesis.tex. Pleasetake a look at this file in order for more detailed instructions abouthow to use the class.

It is recommended to use latexmk to build your LaTeX documents. Yourdistribution might already have this command. If so, you can use

latexmk

in the main directory of this repository in order to build the examplefile.

Required packages for the class

The template uses various LaTeX packages that you should install usingyour favourite LaTeX distribution. Some distributions already do thisautomatically when you compile the document for the first time. Othersrequire manual updates. Please refer to the documentation of your LaTeXdistribution for more details.

Here is a list of packages that you need (I am using the packagename as specified on CTAN):

• amsmath
• amsthm
• booktabs
• csquotes
• dsfont
• glossaries
• graphicx
• fontspec (only for LuaTeX and XeTeX users)
• ifluatex
• ifpdf
• ifxetex
• inputenc (only for pdfTeX users)
• koma-script
• makeidx
• paralist
• setspace
• siunitx
• subcaption
• xcolor
• xspace

Required packages for the example document

Typesetting the example document requires an additional set of packages.Feel free to remove them, though—they are only used for showcasinghow a real document might look like.

• biblatex
• bookmark
• etoolbox
• hyperref
• metalogo

For pdfTeX users:

• ebgaramond
• sourcecodepro

For LuaTeX or XeTeX users:

• The EB Garamond font
• The Source Code Pro font

If you installed the packages above, everything should workautomatically.

License

The template uses the MIT license. Please see the fileLICENSE.md in the main directory of the repository formore details.

Known issues

The superscript citation style is not compatible with all citationstyles. For example, to use the citation with chem-angew, pleaseuse an adjusted \supercite command such as this one:

\DeclareCiteCommand{\supercite}[\mkbibsuperscript]
{\bibopenbracket%
	\usebibmacro{cite:init}%
	\let\multicitedelim=\supercitedelim
	\usebibmacro{prenote}}
{\usebibmacro{citeindex}%
	\usebibmacro{cite:comp}}
{}
{\usebibmacro{cite:dump}%
	\usebibmacro{postnote}%
	\bibclosebracket%
}

Thanks to Carlo Botha for this contribution!

Extensions

Table of contents per chapter

If you want a small table of contents for each chapter, updatemimosis.cls as follows:

\usepackage[automark,headsepline,plainheadsepline]{scrlayer-scrpage}
\pagestyle{scrheadings}
\automark[section]{chapter}

\lehead*{\headmark}
\cehead{}
\rehead{\headmark}

\lohead{\headmark}
\cohead{}
\rohead*{\headmark}

\newpairofpagestyles[scrheadings]{chapter}{%
	\KOMAoptions{headsepline=false,plainheadsepline=false}%
	\ihead*{}%
	\ohead*{}%
}

\newpairofpagestyles[scrheadings]{part}{%
	\KOMAoptions{headsepline=false,plainheadsepline=false}%
	\ihead*{}%
	\ohead*{}%
}

\renewcommand*\chapterpagestyle{chapter}

\renewcommand*\partpagestyle{part}

This extension was contributed by Nikos Antoniadis in issue 16.If you want to add this as proper extension or configurable parameter,please let me know!

Frequently asked questions (FAQ)

1. Does the template support bold fonts?
   
   Yes. First of all, you can change the default font (my personalsuggestion is to use the fontspec package and xelatex or lualatex;then, changing your font is as easy as using \setmainfont). Second,note that in older TeX distributions, the font ‘EBGaramond’, shipped in the ebgaramond package, does not shipwith a bold variant. Consider updating your TeX distribution or manuallyreplacing the font. This is not an issue with thispackage—please see issue #10 for moreinformation.

2. How do I use siunitx?
   
   The options of this package were recently updated. The setup has nowbeen removed to simplify the package. For the new version of thepackage, the following options are suggested by Holger Dell:

   \sisetup{%
     mode                = match,
     propagate-math-font = true,
     reset-math-version  = false,
     reset-text-family   = false,
     reset-text-series   = false,
     reset-text-shape    = false,
     text-family-to-math = true,
     text-series-to-math = true,
   }

   If this does not work, you can also fall back to the older settings:

   \sisetup{%
     detect-all    = true,
     detect-family = true,
     detect-mode   = true,
     detect-shape  = true,
     detect-weight = true,
   }

3. I have a font with special support for ordinal numbers. How can I usethem?
   
   The easiest way is to override the definitions and specify therequired font features:

   \renewcommand{\st}{{\addfontfeatures{VerticalPosition=Ordinal}\textup{st}}\xspace}
   \renewcommand{\rd}{{\addfontfeatures{VerticalPosition=Ordinal}\textup{rd}}\xspace}
   \renewcommand{\nd}{{\addfontfeatures{VerticalPosition=Ordinal}\textup{nd}}\xspace}
   \renewcommand{\th}{{\addfontfeatures{VerticalPosition=Ordinal}\textup{th}}\xspace}

   Notice that this will not work for most fonts. If you are unsure,just leave the default values in place.

Contributing

If you require additional features, find some bugs, or just have somegeneric inquiries, please just open an issue in this repository.

Contributors

Here is a list of contributors:

• Nikos Antoniadis (nikosantoniadis): mini-TOC extension
• bottom-bracket: automake and standalone compatibility improvements
• Giuseppe (giuscri): improved cleanup operations
• Carlo Botha: fixed \supercite for chem-angew citation style
• Miloslav Číž (drummyfish): grammar/style corrections for README file
• Holger Dell (holgerdell): numerous simplifications of the main template; compatibility updates
• Bastian Rieck (Pseudomanifold): original creator and maintainer
• Diego A. Rodriquez (diarodriguezva): support with ebgaramond updates
• TonyY: latexmkrc updates and fixes; hyperref fixes