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

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

For the impatient or curious: this is what the template looks like. You may also want to take a look at 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 it looks in practice? The following documents have been typeset with this template (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 it uses A4 paper size by default—this can be easily adjusted to fit your personal needs, though (see below).

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

How to use

If you are using Overleaf, download latex-mimosis in the gallery. If you want to use the template locally, follow these steps:

• 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 as a 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 should probably start with changing the fonts. I strongly recommend to use xelatex or lualatex to build the document, as this will make font selection almost trivial. Essentially, you only require these three commands (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 to remove this code block here:

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

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

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

How to customise

The template is based on the excellent KOMA-script class. 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. Please take a look at this file in order for more detailed instructions about how to use the class.

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

latexmk

in the main directory of this repository in order to build the example file.

Required packages for the class

The template uses various LaTeX packages that you should install using your favourite LaTeX distribution. Some distributions already do this automatically when you compile the document for the first time. Others require manual updates. Please refer to the documentation of your LaTeX distribution for more details.

Here is a list of packages that you need (I am using the package name 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 showcasing how 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 work automatically.

License

The template uses the MIT license. Please see the file LICENSE.md in the main directory of the repository for more details.

Known issues

The superscript citation style is not compatible with all citation styles. For example, to use the citation with chem-angew, please use 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, update mimosis.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 personal suggestion 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 ‘EB Garamond’, shipped in the ebgaramond package, does not ship with a bold variant. Consider updating your TeX distribution or manually replacing the font. This is not an issue with this package—please see issue #10 for more information.

2. How do I use siunitx?
   
   The options of this package were recently updated. The setup has now been removed to simplify the package. For the new version of the package, 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 use them?
   
   The easiest way is to override the definitions and specify the required 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.

4. I want to use standard TeX fonts, but they look weird. (See issue #29 for more details)
   
   This could be related to the encoding if you are using pdflatex. Either consider using a better font, such as lmodern (to be found in the package with the same name), or use a different encoding:

   \usepackage[OT1]{fontenc}

   This might cause problems when copying text from the template, though. The better solution is to use lmodern.

5. How can I ensure that the font for equations matches the main font?
   
   This depends a lot on your font selection. If you are using xelatex, consider using the mathspec package. Else, check that a package is available that provides maths support. For EB Garamond, the unicode-math package can be used, for instance. (See issue #33 for a brief discussion)

Contributing

If you require additional features, find some bugs, or just have some generic 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
• Michaël Defferrard (mdeff): matching fonts for mathematics and text
• 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