[johnchristopher]

I thought the default style(s) were the results of years of micro tweaking and deep studies of the impact of character positioning and flows by Knuth and that only the default \LaTeX{} style could give that 2% head start or that A instead of a B++ for any essay.

Now we add blue titles ? And sans serif font ?

Sarcasm apart, it looks good. Some links are 404 on the page though (classic thesis, etc.).

[hiphopyo]

+1. The blue titles, the unnecessary lines and the fact that he branded it with the whole Clean<bold>Thesis</bold> thing doesn't really sound clean in my book.

I'm currently looking for a thesis template as well, but the more I come across (1) the more I just want to do something like http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/.

(1) http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/326/latex-templates-f...

[fizixer]

I just finished a rant on a certain tex forum about how LaTeX adds 10x complexity (to TeX + plainTeX) for making end-user's life about 10% easier.

My two cents:

- Once you become a moderately advanced LaTeX user, you need more control over your document.

- This almost exclusively leads to a preamble that is a complete mess of spaghetti code.

- Putting that mess in a separate file doesn't solve the issue, only hides it.

- Another view is that if your preamble is a mess, your document is screaming at you to create your own documentclass (or rename the class you're using and modify it).

- But that requires you become familiar with LaTeX (and TeX) internals.

- But that is way harder than becoming familiar with TeX + PlainTeX.

Therefore, as an intermediate to advanced TeX user I'm beginning to believe that TeX + PlainTeX is a much better approach. Although you'd sacrifice advanced functionality of hundreds of LaTeX packages, but people who wrote those packages could've easily written TeX macro-collections. LaTeX is used more only because it has more momentum behind it; otherwise PlainTex is a much cleaner approach.

If you're willing to get under the hood of the whole system, I highly recommend Knuth's The TeXbook.

P.S.: Just for comparison, LaTeX *.ltx files are about ~10,000 LOCs compared to ~1200 LOCs of plain.tex (which is fully documented in Appendix B of The TeXbook).

[paulojreis]

This link got me started in TeX (I was just barely aware of its existence before). http://nitens.org/taraborelli/cvtex

Not a thesis template at all, but great ideas and it sheds some light on how to get decent typography.

On a side note, I think it would be great to have a good WYSIWYG TeX editor for office/basic user level of proficiency. Typesetting does matter, it profoundly impacts reading, which is particularly relevant when you're giving 300+ pages of your hard work for someone else to read. It would be very good for everyone to get decent default typesetting. Unfortunately, our alternatives are:

* Word/typical word processors, which are are horrible at typesetting;

* TeX, which is good, but it's hard for most people and has an aura of complexity (it's code, after all...);

* Publishing software, such as Adobe InDesign, which are indeed great at typesetting, but only if you know what you are doing. This is professional software, which is clearly not aimed at common users.

[JupiterMoon]

Check out Lyx

[jhasse]

+1

I've wrote my Bachelor thesis in LyX and it's awesome, especially for math!

If someone is interested (it's about Bitcoin and in German), here's the source: http://www.math.uni-bremen.de/~jhasse/Bachelor-Arbeit.zip And here's the PDF: http://www.math.uni-bremen.de/~jhasse/Kryptografische%20Grun... Nothing fancy like Clean Thesis though. I like the http://motherfuckingwebsite.com/ approach better ;)

[bhaak]

You seem to confuse TeX and LaTeX. Knuth himself doesn't do LaTeX so the default styles aren't from him.

It's been a while since I read the documentation to KOMAscript and Memoir but I think both contain some criticism on Lamport's default styles.

There is nothing wrong per se with a sans serif font for titles as long as it fits to the serif font for the main text. I'm not quite convinced though that this is the case here.

BTW, the README states that this layout has been "inspired by user guide documents from Apple Inc." So don't bash on the ground it might look like a Word document. ;-)

[johnchristopher]

> You seem to confuse TeX and LaTeX. Knuth himself doesn't do LaTeX so the default styles aren't from him.

Oops, mea culpa. You're right, I mixed both thinking Latex and Tex were quite equivalent in term of style rendering. I never bothered looking into Tex, I just wrote some Latex classes (and documents, of course).

> BTW, the README states that this layout has been "inspired by user guide documents from Apple Inc." So don't bash on the ground it might look like a Word document. ;-)

Oh but Word wasn't on my mind at all when I commented. I even followed the link on keynote to see what was the reference (since I never looked at keynote or iLifexxx documentation).

[TylerE]

Basically....

TeX is low level formatting...like pre-CSS HTML... with the equivalent of <font> tags every where.

LaTeX is like CSS...being a set of markup-driven global rules.

[Maakuth]

Indeed, blue titles evoke MS Word. As pointed out, a PDF rendered with this style would be great help in understanding it. Perhaps it's a good choice for on-screen reading, but shouldn't you go with serif typefaces when laying out for print?

[johnchristopher]

A long time ago I did some googling (aka `research') on the subject and indeed I found out that using serif for printed documents is non negotiable ; it's supposed (and I agree with that) to let the eyes decrypt words faster and smoother than when reading sans serif. Oddly enough sans serif is easier to decipher on screens. I don't know yet which kind of fonts I should use on my e-reader though.

The web seems to think it's a matter of taste and adequacy nowadays:

http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2013/03/serif-vs-sans-the-fi...

http://designshack.net/articles/typography/serif-vs-sans-ser...

http://www.fonts.com/content/learning/fontology/level-1/type...

[kevin_thibedeau]

Those studies focused on geometric sans serif fonts like Helvetica. Humanist sans fonts have been demonstrated to have higher legibility in print.

[MengerSponge]

I doubt there were deep studies, because there so much of a document's design is a matter of taste. For example, Don Knuth really liked a certain generation of math journals, so he built TeX and CM to emulate that. Just because it's the default doesn't mean it's an optimal design.

I'm partial to serif fonts, and Scala in particular, but Apple's design documents are beautiful too, and I can't begrudge someone wanting to emulate their design.

[baby]

Yeah I don't understand this sans serif font either.