In June 2003 I received a PhD degree in Computer Science from the Delft University of Technology.
I typeset my PhD thesis using LaTeX, which is an extremely powerful document preparation system, but not always for the faint of heart. Luckily, there is a wealth of information available in books and on-line that allowed me to eventually solve most of the problems I encountered.
All that problem-solving left me with quite a bit of LaTeX knowledge in my head, much of it specific to my thesis, some of it specific to a Delft University thesis, and some of it more generally useful.
I created this website because I felt it was better to write this knowledge down than to just let it all slip away again.
Many people make their finished thesis available on-line, but it was a big disappointment to me that no other Delft University graduate students working in LaTeX (or at least none that I could find) had ever seemed to think of putting the sources to their theses on-line.
I am trying to set a good example by making available not just my finished thesis, but also the full LaTeX source archive. All my code is free for you to use or adapt.
This page contains answers to a number of general “How can you do foo in LaTeX?” questions.
I do not claim any particular insights or originality here — much of this can readily be found elsewhere, and most of it is configuration, not creation. But it sure would have helped me to have all of these listed together in one place, illustrated with code snippets and before-and-after pictures of the results...
As I write this, tomorrow will mark the 9th anniversary of my PhD thesis defence. It's hard to believe so much time has already passed. I have occasionally wondered if the time had not come to take this website down. Surely, after so very long, most of the information will have become dated, and many of the recommendations meaningless?
But then: I still get one or two email messages every month from somebody who's not only found these pages, but found them useful. And as it is absolutely no effort for me to keep the site alive, I have decided I will continue to do so for a while longer.
Wow, another four years come and gone. Time sure flies. The trickle of email feedback on these pages has pretty much dwindled down to nothing, and I do fear that the information presented here has now become truly dated. But what the hey, I'll give it another year or so. Note that I do still incorporate any feedback I do get, so if you spot any problems or errors, just drop me a note and I'll try to fix things.