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28. How can you create a thesis cover in LaTeX?

Answer

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.

Example usage

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

Things to watch out for

Nicky warns that pdflatex will not work because of the psfrag tricks used. Hence the explicit ps2pdf call.