Bishop’s University

    LaTeX Resources

    Home > Academic Programs > Faculty of Arts and Science > Natural Sciences and Mathematics > Computer Science > Resources > LaTeX Resources

    The department requires the use of LaTeX for typesetting all the documents related to graduate research. LaTeX is a popular and powerful typesetting system useful for many other things and particularly handy when dealing with complicated formulae, so we encourage students to use it in other circumstances as well.

    The most popular LaTeX distributions appear to be TeX Live and MikTeX (in this order). Depending on the platform a LaTeX distribution may come with a dedicated editor. A popular alternative editor for LaTeX is Emacs with the AUCTeX package.

    LaTeX is a (relatively simple) programming language rather than a visual word processor so requires a bit of learning before use. However, there are a few applications that more or less hide LaTeX under a visual word processor, which may be an interesting alternative to explore especially for beginners. The most popular such application is LyX.

    Production of graduate documents and theses

    The mandatory document class for typesetting Master’s theses is buthesis.cls. The mandatory document class for typesetting all other documents related to graduate research is bureport.cls. These document classes are relatively thin overlays over standard document classes (book and article, respectively). Check out our sample thesis (typeset to PDF) and also the document class files for documentation on how to use these document classes.

    More LaTeX resources

    The most popular book on LaTeX (written by the inventor of LaTeX himself) is LaTeX: A Document Preparation System, second edition (by L. Lamport, Addison-Wesley Professional, 1994). Electronic copies are available in several places but their legality is a grey area and so we cannot provide any links. This book is a textbook and a reference manual folded into one and is highly recommended for all LaTeX users.

    Beginners guides

    LaTeX resources

    Related resources