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 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

• 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 using pdflatex
• Write a nice thesis in LaTeX

How to customize

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 Minion Pro font; please use your favourite search engine for this or change the line \setmainfont{Minion Pro} in the preamble to another font (or leave it out entirely)

License

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

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:

• Giuseppe (giuscri): improved cleanup operations
• Miloslav Číž (drummyfish): grammar/style corrections for README file
• Bastian Rieck (Pseudomanifold): original creator and maintainer
• TonyY: latexmkrc updates