On Unix, use the following code to create a cover with xfig and LaTeX.
Note: This question and answer were contributed by Nicky van Foreest at the University of Twente. I have not used this code myself, and present it here without further comments or warranty.
Save the following to a file cover.tex:
\documentclass[10pt,landscape]{article} %% Sometimes it is better to make the cover of your thesis by means of %% Latex. One such reason may be that some of the words contain %% ligatures, such as the f and l in the word flow. I used the %% following procedure to make the cover of my thesis. First I made, %% with xfig, an outline of the %% front, middle and, back of the cover. Then I centred some marker %% texts on the front and middle part in the the xfig file. With %% psfrag these markers can be %% replaced by text when the text is `latexed'. In that way so can put %% any latex text in place of %% the markers. %% This is the xfig file I used. Remove the % signs in front to use %% it. The rectangles used for the front and the back have %% dimensions 17 x 24 cm, while the middle part has dimension 17 x 1.3 %% cm. (The thickness of the book depends on the number of pages you %% use. Hence, you should adapt the 1.3 to match the size of your %% book.) Note that I used a line thickness of 0 (!) to avoid seeing %% black lines on the cover. The prints of the cover are wysiwyg. You %% should export this file from xfig as an eps file %The xfig file cover.fig starts here. %#FIG 3.2 %Landscape %Center %Metric %Letter %100.00 %Single %-2 %1200 2 %6 8235 0 15885 10800 %2 2 0 0 0 7 50 -1 -1 0.000 0 0 7 0 0 5 % 8235 0 15885 0 15885 10799 8235 10799 8235 0 %4 0 0 50 -1 0 12 0.0000 4 120 135 11925 3330 N\001 %4 0 0 50 -1 0 12 0.0000 4 165 135 11925 2340 Q\001 %-6 %6 7650 0 8235 10800 %2 2 0 0 0 7 50 -1 -1 0.000 0 0 7 0 0 5 % 7650 0 8235 0 8235 10799 7650 10799 7650 0 %4 0 0 50 -1 0 12 0.0000 4 120 105 7890 8325 P\001 %4 0 0 50 -1 0 12 0.0000 4 120 120 7882 1260 R\001 %-6 %2 2 0 0 0 7 50 -1 -1 0.000 0 0 7 0 0 5 % 0 1 7650 1 7650 10800 0 10800 0 1 % The cover.fig file stops here. % Now the rest of the latex file. % I like a colour \usepackage[usenames]{color} % use rotating to rotate the text on the middle part of the cover \usepackage{rotating} % the publisher needs some extra space around the cover to get a % neater cut. \usepackage[vcentering,dvips]{geometry} \geometry{papersize={363mm,250mm},total={353mm,240mm}} % Show markers to figure out how the text will appear on the cover \usepackage[a3,cam,center]{crop} \crop[font=\upshape\mdseries\small\textsf] \usepackage{graphicx,epsfig,psfrag,pstricks} % no page numbers on the cover \pagestyle{empty} % The same font as I used for my thesis. \usepackage{times} \begin{document} \pagecolor{Mahogany} %\pagecolor{Maroon} %\color{White} \begin{center} \psfrag{Q}[c][]{\LARGE{\textbf{Thesis Title Thesis Title}}} \psfrag{N}[c][]{\LARGE \textbf{Author Author}} \psfrag{R}[c][]{ \begin{turn}{-90} {\Large \textbf{Author Author}} \end{turn} } \psfrag{P}[c][]{ \begin{turn}{-90} {\Large \textbf{Thesis Title Thesis Title}} \end{turn} } \includegraphics{cover} \end{center} % It is simple to include figures/pictures in the xfig file. These % will appear on the front page. \end{document} %%% Local Variables: %%% mode: latex %%% End:
In order to build the cover file:
latex cover.tex dvips -Ppdf -G0 cover.dvi -o cover.ps ps2pdf cover.ps
Nicky warns that pdflatex will not work because of the psfrag tricks used. Hence the explicit ps2pdf call.