thesis in LaTeX without memoir

Question

Hi, I'm preparing a thesis report in LaTeX. I don't want to use the memoir class as I would like total control. I have two questions:

1. My thesis consists of an introduction and then a series of articles pasted one after the other. Thus each article has its own abstract, introduction, etc... and a bibliography at its end. I understand that perhaps a package like multibib can help when we have multiple bibliographies. The idea that I came with is to write each article separately and then use pdfpages to combine the final document. Long time ago dvi files concatenation was popular but with graphics I think that pdfpages is better.

   I saw that another package exists, named combine which can help with what I am doing. I'm still exploring my options. Any suggestions?

2. If I decide to use a book class instead to make my thesis resemble more into a book-like format which is better, then using the book class format gives me section headings like 0.1 Introduction with the leading 0. This 0 doesn't show in the article class format. How to change this default book class numbering format so that I'll have e.g. 1. Introduction?

Thanks a lot...

Answer 1

You only get 0.1 as the first number if you use \section as your top-level structure. In a book you should use \chapter.

Answer 2

I'd say take a look at memoir again. It's like an extended book class that includes functionality of many packages by default (fancyhdr & titlesec to name a few).

1. If you are writing all the articles yourself (so they will all be in latex; it wasn't clear to me if you're authoring the whole document or compiling research...) then there is no reason to use pdfpages. Just section your document appropriately (maybe use the \part command). You'll have much better control of bibliography(s)

2. The book class probably gives you a 0.1 or .1 because you're using the \section command, which is the top-level command in the article class-- \chapter will give you the 1.0 that you're looking for.

My own recommendation:

Start with whatever class you'd like and a minimal amount of packages loaded. Write EVERYTHING first, and worry about the style/look/feel of the document after you're done authoring the WHOLE THING.

Answer 3

To merge several independent articles into a single bigger document, have a look at the combine package.