University Of Southampton LaTeX documents

LaTeX Documents for the University of Southampton. Mainly for Thesis and project reports

For slides with Beamer, please see https://git.soton.ac.uk/sw2f11/latex-slides-template

FAQ

Q: How do I install and use the templates?

See the Install section below.

Q: How do I include an "Accessed on", "Visited on", "Date last Accessed" or "Last visited" note for urls?

The bibliography is formatted by the natbib package that does not support the urldate field in .bib files. As a work around, add a note={Accessed on 2020-01-01} to the relevant bib entry.

For more info, see this Stack Exchange question.

Q: How do I fix a bib entry with special characters (&%)?

You may get an error like "Paragraph ended before \BR@@bibitem was complete" or there may be a cascade of errors because of an unclosed \begin statement.

The short term solution is to manually "escape" special characters in the .bib url fields, i.e. url = {http://www.somesite.com/8%20report} => url = {http://www.somesite.com/8\%20report}.

Unfortunately, the longer term solution requires editing some source files. Locate the plainnat.bst (or biblatex.bst file, if using biblatex) and add the following in the file at the end of FUNCTION {begin.bib}

    "\providecommand{\BIBdecl}{\relax}"
    write$ newline$
    "\BIBdecl"
    write$ newline$

Then add \newcommand{\BIBdecl}{\catcode`\%=12 } before \begin{document} in your .tex document source.

Stack Exchange Source

Q: Can I use biblatex instead of natbib?

Yes, you can. Since this template has existed longer than biblatex it uses the older natbib. there are good reasons to change to biblatex but natbib is still preferred by journals, so using natbib will mean that source material from papers will not need to be modified.

Install instructions

This is if you do not want to use a service like Overleaf or want to use a different template other than the uosthesis class provided. If you want to compile documents on your own machine, first you must install a LaTeX distribution. Either TeXLive or MikTeX will work. For TeXLive, you do not need a full installation (which is huge).

For detailed LaTeX Installation help please look at the detailed template instructions

For preparing a single document - just one Thesis, Dissertation or Final project report

This is if you will only need to use one template, and works on Overleaf too. Go to the Releases page and download the relevant quickstart package. Unzip and start editing the Thesis.tex,Progress.tex,GDP.tex file as appropriate for the report you are doing. This should compile straight away from an editor like TeXstudio, or from the Overleaf workspace.

For multiple use - for Progress reports, Thesis and more frequent use

Given you will use the template more than once, this is definitely the preferred option. Download the Source Code from the Releases page and extract it to the {TEXMF} folder (see below).

Your {TEXMF} root subdirectory

For Tex Live: This whole folder can be moved into the ~/texmf directory to begin using the class files.

For MikTeX: It is platform dependent, See UserInstall from (https://miktex.org/kb/texmf-roots). You may need to register your directories: https://docs.miktex.org/manual/localadditions.html. You will need to update the filename database (FNDB) (MiKTeX Console -> Tasks -> Refresh file name database), see https://docs.miktex.org/manual/configuring.html#fndbupdate. You can do this in the command line with the initexmf -u command.

The folder post install

If using the zip download, there may be one or two containing directories before the actual folders that need copying. Once the folder has been extracted your {TEXMF} directory should look like so.

+-{TEXMF}
    +-bibtex
    |  +-bib
    |      +-uosdocs
    +-doc
    |  +-latex
    |      +-uosdocs
    +-templates
    |  +-latex
    |      +-uosdocs
    +-tex
    |  +-latex
    |      +-uosdocs
    +-source
       +-docstrip
           +-uosdocs

Using the template

Now copy the contents of the templates/latex/uosdocs directory into your working directory.

In the working directory, open the relevant copied root tex file, i.e. Thesis.tex etc. and begin your masterpiece.

More info can be found in the Instructions.

Updating

Repeat the installation step and it will overwrite the existing files.

About this package

Created with docstrip .ins and .dtx files in the source directory. See the Instructions for more info about usage and building.

The version hosted on https://git.soton.ac.uk/el7g15/uos-latex-template is kept up to date with the University of Southampton template. The version hosted on GitHub may diverge from that.