DEPARTMENT OF TEX ENGINEERING

INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY MADRAS

CHENNAI – 600036

The Title of the Thesis Will Appear

Here if you Set it

A Whatever
Submitted by
FIRSTNAME LASTNAME

For the award of the degree

Of
WHATEVER DEGREE
January 2022
 DEPARTMENT OF TEX ENGINEERING
INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY MADRAS
CHENNAI – 600036

The Title of the Thesis Will Appear

Here if you Set it

A Whatever
Submitted by
FIRSTNAME LASTNAME

For the award of the degree

Of
WHATEVER DEGREE
January 2022

© 2022 Indian Institute of Technology Madras

A quotable quote that is quoted by the quoter

– Quote Author
To whoever, whatever, wherever or whenever, or all of those, or
none at all
 THESIS CERTIFICATE

This is to undertake that the Whatever titled WHATEVER TITLE, submitted by me

to the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, for the award of Whatever Degree, is a
bona fide record of the research work done by me under the supervision of Whoever
Guides. The contents of this Whatever, in full or in parts, have not been submitted to
any other Institute or University for the award of any degree or diploma.

In order to effectively convey the idea presented in this Thesis, the following work of
other authors or sources was reprinted in the Thesis with their permission:

1. Figures 3.2(a, b, d) and (g) are distributed under the GNU GPL v2 or higher and
are free to use. Figures 3.2(e, f) are distributed under the Creative Commons
Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license and are free to use

2. Figure 3.2(c) is copyright Aurelio A. Heckert, and licensed under the Free Art
License. Figure 3.2(h) is freely distributed under the Artistic License v2 or higher

Chennai 600036 Firstname Lastname

Date: 01 January 2022

Dr. Whoever
Research advisor
Professor
Department of Whatever
IIT Madras

Dr. Whoever
Research co-advisor
Professor
Department of Whatever
IIT Madras

© 2022 Indian Institute of Technology Madras

 LIST OF PUBLICATIONS

I. REFEREED JOURNALS BASED ON THESIS

whatever

II. REFEREED JOURNALS (OTHERS)

whatever

III. PRESENTATIONS IN CONFERENCES

whatever

IV. PUBLICATIONS IN CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS

whatever
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Whatever

i
 ABSTRACT

KEYWORDS LATEX; template; dissertation; thesis; synopsis

This is a short tutorial to the iitmdissertation document-class and package. This,

however, is not a LATEX tutorial. It will help a user (moderately) familiar with LATEX to
write his/her dissertation using iitmdissertation.

iii
 CONTENTS

Page

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS i

ABSTRACT iii

LIST OF TABLES vii

LIST OF FIGURES ix

CHAPTER 1 A QUICKSTART GUIDE 1

1.1 Compilation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.2 Degree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.2.1 Synopsis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.3 Names and Particulars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.4 Populating essential information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

CHAPTER 2 GENERAL DOCUMENT STRUCTURES 9

2.1 Sectioning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.2 Itemized lists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.2.1 Unnumbered lists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.2.2 Numbered lists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2.3 Quotes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.4 Footnotes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.5 Simple Glossary and Acronyms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

CHAPTER 3 FLOATS, CROSS-REFERENCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY 15

3.1 Floats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3.1.1 Figures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
3.2 Tables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
3.3 Cross-references . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
3.4 Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

CHAPTER 4 MATHEMATICS 23

APPENDIX A GENERAL NOTES 27

A.1 Source files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
A.2 Packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
A.2.1 Some useful packages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

REFERENCES 31

v
CURRICULUM VITAE 33

COMMITTEE 35

vi
 LIST OF TABLES

Table Caption Page

1.1 List of tokens for names and particulars. While, a document where
these are unset will still compile and produce an output, a useful output
is only produced when they are set to the appropriate values. . . . . . . 6
1.2 Information to be filled in the pre-matter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.3 Information to be filled in the back-matter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.4 Optional information in the front-matter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

2.1 The various bullet styles available . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

2.2 The various numbering styles available . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

3.1 Shown below is a simple elegant table with a very long caption. Tables
are quite helpful in organizing information in a presentable manner. . . 18
3.2 Shown below is a table. Vertical rules make make for unappealing
tables. Notice that the caption is justified and single-spaced . . . . . . . 19

4.1 Various common math commands that may be useful . . . . . . . . . . 25

A.1 A list of commonly required (pre-loaded) packages along with links to

their documentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

vii
 LIST OF FIGURES

Figure Caption Page

1.1 The project structure for the thesis: The red colored files/folders denote
source files which should not meddled with. The beige/brown colored
files/folders are user files which the user edits with required material. . . 3

3.1 Tux is a friendly penguin. Being very sociable, he has many friends of
different kinds across age-groups. We will shortly meet his friends. . . . 16
3.2 Tux with his various friends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
 CHAPTER 1

A QUICKSTART GUIDE

Quite often, one simply wants to get started making the document without fussing about
with the details too much. This chapter serves exactly that end. Here you will find a
simple introduction along with a minimal document example in listing 1.1 to get you
started. Basic familiarity with LATEX is assumed.

It is strongly recommended to split up your dissertation into logical chunks, each of

which lives in its own file. One (natural) way of doing so is by splitting the dissertation
into chapters, so that each chapter is in a separate file. Regardless of the manner in which
one segments the document, the contents must necessarily fall in one of four categories,
each synonymous with a folder:

(i) prematter/ – this folder contains all material that precede the first numbered
page of the dissertation, the chapter “Acknowledgements”

(ii) frontmatter/ – this folder contains all material that belong in the pages that
precede theactual technical content of the dissertation, i.e, the very first chapter

(iii) mainmatter/ – as the name suggests, this folder houses all the technical
material of the dissertation itself. This folder typically containts two subfolders:
chapters/ and appendices/, the latter – containing material for the appendix
– being optional.

(iv) backmatter/ – the closing material of the dissertation is placed here, which are
a CV and the details of the respective committee members of the author
Another important file that accompanies the dissertation files is references.bib.
This is a BibTEX file that contains all the requisite references that one will be citing
in the textual material. Further, it is recommended to place all images in another
folder: images/. Of course, one can still use iitm-dissertation without such a file
structure, but it is strongly discouraged.
 Listing 1.1: A minimal thesis.tex file
\documentclass 1
[phd, 2
% zdraft, 3
smplmath] 4
{iitmdissertation} 5

\usepackage{multirow} 7

\setupGlossaryAbbreviationsDefinitions 9
\begin{document} 10
\prematter 11
\input 0-prematter/pre-quote 12
\input 0-prematter/pre-dedication 13
\printCertificate 14
\input 0-prematter/pre-list-of-publications 15

\begin{FrontMatter} 17
\printGlossaryAndAbbreviations 18
\printNotation 19
\end{FrontMatter} 20

\begin{MainMatter} 22
\input 2-mainmatter/chapters/chap-introduction 23
\input 2-mainmatter/chapters/chap-lists 24
\input 2-mainmatter/chapters/chap-maths 25
\input 2-mainmatter/chapters/chap-figures-tables 26

\appendix 28
\input 2-mainmatter/appendices/appn-general-notes 29
\end{MainMatter} 30

\begin{BackMatter} 32
\printBibliographyReferences{references.bib} 33
\printCV 34
\printCommittee 35
\end{BackMatter} 36
\end{document} 37

Of these segments, the institute guidelines mandate that all segments of the dissertation
are necessary except for a page for quotes (pre-quote in the example above: line #13),
and, a “dedication” page (pre-dedication in the example above: line #12).

2
Note: All user-defined macros as well as loading commands for all required packages
must be placed above line #9 in 1.1 above.

Figure 1.1: The project structure for the thesis: The red colored files/folders denote
source files which should not meddled with. The beige/brown colored
files/folders are user files which the user edits with required material.

thesis/

iitm.bst
� thesis.tex references.bib

� � � � � �
iitmdissertation.cls iitmdissertation.sty synopsis.tex

�
�
�
� �

zz-imp/

� �� � � � �

0-prematter/

� �� � � � �

1-frontmatter/

� � � � � � � � � � � �
� � � � � �

2-mainmatter/chapters/ appendices/

� �� | � | � |
images/

� �� � � � �
3-backmatter/

1.1 COMPILATION
All development and testing of iitmdissertation was done exclusively on a low-
end laptop using a Linux-based operating system with th latest distribution of TEXLive.
Moreover, testing was also done using Overleaf1 , which is the recommended way to use
iitdissertation. No testing on other proprietary operating systems was done due to
their non-availability. Contributions in this direction are welcome.
1 Overleaf [https://www.overleaf.com/] is an “open-source online real-time collaborative LATEX
editor”. As of the time of this writing enrolled members of IITM can avail a “Professional” Overleaf
account by signing up with their smail accounts

3
1.2 DEGREE
The institute guidelines specify different cover pages for the various degrees that require
a dissertation. Enabling a degree option ensures that the proper “tape color” for the
cover page is drawn. Of these, the following are supported :

• ms – use this option in to enable the appropriate options for the MS degree

\documentclass
[ms]
{iitmdissertation}

• phd – use this option in to enable the appropriate options for the PhD degree

\documentclass
[phd]
{iitmdissertation}

Support for btech, dd, mtech and mba, or any other degree for that matter, can be easily
made available when the specifications for their cover pages are made available.

In addition to the type of degree of the dissertation, two further options are available –
zdraft. As the name suggests, this places the document in draft mode which enables
colored links for cross-references, citations, URLs, Table of contents and other lists.
In addition to activating these links (i.e makes them clickable), the option also inserts
PDF bookmarks, thereby enabling easy navigation. This option, enabled in the minimal
example in listing 1.1, makes it easier to work with documents while one is working on
them.

1.2.1 Synopsis
An additional option of synopsis is also available to make setting synopsis documents
easy. While the general formatting is largely similar there are structural changes in the
synopsis when compared to the actual thesis. iitmdissertation takes care of this

4
automatically when the synopsis option is set

\documentclass
[phd,
synopsis]
{iitmdissertation}

By default, the cover page has a certain blue-colored tape for the synopsis as mandated
by the guidelines. A yellowtape option is also provided in addition to thedegree and
other options described here. As the name suggests produces a yellow tape color in the
cover page that is mandated on approved versions by the institute. Note that enabling
this option overrides the default color setting of the degree:

\documentclass
[phd,
synopsis,
yellowtape]
{iitmdissertation}

Note: There is an option called indenttoc available that indents section and
subsection entries in the table of contents. While, the official guidelines do not
recommend that the table of contents be indented, it can be enabled if desired by
specifying the option

\documentclass
[phd,
indenttoc]
{iitmdissertation}

5
1.3 NAMES AND PARTICULARS
With a view to minimize meddling with source files and to simplify the user-experience,
a number of tokens are made available to the user:

Table 1.1: List of tokens for names and particulars. While, a document where these
are unset will still compile and produce an output, a useful output is only
produced when they are set to the appropriate values.

Token name Intended Contents

\dissertationDepartment Name of the department
\dissertationAuthorName Name of the author
\dissertationDateOfBirth Date of birth of the author
\dissertationDegree Degree
\dissertationTitle Title of the dissertation
\dissertationMonth Month (on cover page)
\dissertationYear Month (on cover page & certificate)
\dissertationCertificateDate Date (on certificate)
\dissertationType Type of dissertation: Thesis, Project Report, etc
\dissertationGuides Name(s) of the guide(s)
\dissertationCommitteeName General Test Committee, Doctoral Committee, etc
\dissertationImage Filename of image (for cover page)

These tokens are initialized with their desired values in the preamble of thesis.tex:

\documentclass
[phd]
{iitmdissertation}

\dissertationDepartment {...}
\dissertationAuthorName {...}
\dissertationDateOfBirth {...}
\dissertationDegree {...}
\dissertationTitle {...}
\dissertationDate {...}
\dissertationType {...}
\dissertationGuides {...}
\dissertationImage {...}
\dissertationCommitteeName {...}
\dissertationCertificateDate {...}

\begin{document} ... \end{document}

6
1.4 POPULATING ESSENTIAL INFORMATION
In addition to setting the above mentioned tokens appropriately, few files must be filled
with the relevant information which cannot be automatically supplied. Some of these
are mandatory:

Table 1.2: Information to be filled in the pre-matter

Filename Purpose
pre-cert-attr If the dissertation contains work of others, the
institute rules mandate that appropriate attirbutions
along with relevant license information be decalred
in the certificate. If such material has been used, the
user is to fill up the relevant information here. In case
no such material has been used rename or delete this
file.
pre-cert-guides The relevant information regarding the guides is to
be filled up in this file
pre-list-of-publications This file is to be populated with the details of the
author’s publications
pre-quote A page for quotes (optional) – remove line 13 if this
is not desired
pre-dedication A page for specifying a dedication (optional) –
remove line 12 if this is not desired

Table 1.3: Information to be filled in the back-matter

Filename Purpose
back-committee A page containing details of all the committee
members of the dissertation
back-cv-education Relevant information about the educational
qualifications of the author, required for the CV

The following (optional) information is required in order to produce a useful glossary

and list of abbreviations with \printGlossaryAndAbbreviations and for a list of
notations with \printNotation. If you don’t require them, omit these commands from
the FrontMatter block

With all the information in this chapter one can easily get started with his/her document.

7
 Table 1.4: Optional information in the front-matter

Filename Purpose
front-glossary-abbreviations Contains information that belongs in the glossary and
list of abbreviations
front-notation Contains information that belongs in the notation
reference

Happy writing!

8
 CHAPTER 2

GENERAL DOCUMENT STRUCTURES

This chapter and those that follow discuss features of iitmdissertation concerned
with the organization of textual matter.

2.1 SECTIONING
Textual material is organized into chapters, sections, subsections, subsubsection.
Levels deeper than the subsubsection are discouraged (in the specification as well.)
These are automatically numbered and spaced appropriately as per the guidelines. The
corresponding commands are chapter..., section..., subsection... and
subsubsection..., respectively, each taking a single argument, namely the name of
that section-level.

2.2 ITEMIZED LISTS

Lists are useful constructs to organize textual matter in a serial fashion, be they numbered
or unnumbered. When deployed correctly, lists not only make the material more readable,
they also greatly enhance the aesthetics of the document by offering a pleasant contrast
between swathes of bulky paragraphs.

The reader would have seen such lists in chapter ??. Automatic spacing between
list entries, spacing before the list itself, and spacing after it are all taken care of by
iitmdissertation. As expected, lists may also be nested within one another without
needing to worry about the spacing: the package should take care of it automatically.

2.2.1 Unnumbered lists

The simplest way to set an unnumbered list is by using the itemize block:
 \begin{itemize}
\item this is the first item in the list
\item this is the second item here, and,
\item this is the last item in the list.
It so happens that I want to say quite a bit more about
this last item. In that case, I just continue writing
\end{itemize}

Several bullet styles are defined and can be activated by specifying the optional argument
to the itemize block. For instance to set a list to use a diamond marker, one writes:

\begin{itemize}[dmd]
.
.
\end{itemize}

Table 2.1: The various bullet styles available

Option Mark style

blt • first level default
dmd ⋄
dsh –
sqr □
bsq ■
str ★

Unless explicitly specified, item marks default to a preset defined for their respective
level.

2.2.2 Numbered lists

The simplest way to set an unnumbered list is by using the enumerate block:

\begin{itemize}
\item this is the first item in this numbered list
\item this is the second item here, and,
\item this is the last item in the list.

10
 Come to think of it, I don’t prefer one type of list or
the other. However, not all lists need to be numbered.
\end{itemize}

In the case of numbered list, sometimes more options are desirable. For instance, one
might want to surround the item marks by certain characters, or add prefix and/or postfix
to each item mark. This is easily achieved, by simply specifying the optional argument
for the desired counter type along with any prefix and/or postfixes.

Table 2.2: The various numbering styles available

Option Mark
1 Numerals: 1, 2, 3, . . . first level default
i Lowercase roman numerals: i, ii, iii, . . .
I Uppercase roman numerals: I, II, III, . . .
a Lowercase letters: a, b, c, . . .
A Uppercase letters: A, B, C, . . .
rsc Small-case roman numerals: i, ii, iii, . . .

Now, prefixing or suffixing these options with required characters will yield
corresponding results in the output. For instance, the option (1) produces marks (1),
(2), (3), . . . , while the option 1) produces marks 1), 2), 3), . . . .

Note: In order to prefix/suffix marks with the flower braces { or }, one must prefix then
with a backslash \. On the other hand, to prefix/suffix marks with the square brackets [
or ], one must group them within braces like so [ and/or ]. For instance

Steps to a nice dissertation:

\begin{enumerate}[{Step rsc{]}},leftmargin=2cm]
\item reflect over the research done
\item review ones notes, writings, lab journal and
research articles
\item stop overthinking and/or procrastinating
\item start writing
\item realize that there is much to do
\begin{enumerate}[{i\}}]
\item fear not

11
 \item persevere
\item continue writing
\end{enumerate}
\item success!
\end{enumerate}

produces the following list

Step i] reflect over the research done

Step ii] review ones notes, writings, lab journal and research articles

Step iii] stop overthinking and/or procrastinating

Step iv] start writing

Step v] realize that there is much to do

i} fear not

ii} persevere

iii} continue writing

Step vi] success!

Notice that we have set and additional value of 2cm for leftmargin so that our prefix
“Step” does not flow out of the page margin.

2.3 QUOTES
Quite often one might want to quote verbatim a few words, sentences, excerpts or entire
paragraphs from works of others. In such instances, it is good practice to differentiate
the textual material from the quoted one(s). To this end, the recommended and the only
supported way of setting quotes is by use of the csquotes package :

\documentclass
[phd]
{iitmdissertation}

12
 \usepackage{csquotes}

\begin{document}
.
.
.
\end{document}

See ?? for a comprehensive reference manual.

The simplest instance of a quote is \textquote which can be used inline to quote text
from elsewhere (or to simply quote a segment of running text). For instance, the snippet

This is my material. Suddenly I find the need to quote

an author. He says in his article that \textquote[Dr.
Spherical Sphere]{some spheres are rounder than others}

produces the following output:

This is my material. Suddenly I find the need

to quote an author. He says in his article that
“some spheres are rounder than others” (Dr.
Spherical Sphere)

An accompanying display style environment is also available displayquote with a rich

host of options. As a simple example, the following snippet

\begin{displayquote}[Dr. Spherical Sphere]

While all cubes are created equal some spheres are
rounder than others. This fact, not many people
readily admit. However, it is more appropriate to
attribute it to their ignorance rather than malice.
In this article we prove this fact and lay to
rest all rumors surrounding this strange
predicament.
\end{displayquote}

13
produces the following output:

[Dr. Spherical Sphere] While all cubes are created equal some spheres are
rounder than others. This fact, not many people readily admit. However,
it is more appropriate to attribute it to their ignorance rather than malice.
In this article we prove this fact and lay to rest all rumors surrounding this
strange predicament.

iitmdissertation has provisions in place to ensure that the quote is appropriately

line-spaced itself and with regard to surrounding paragraphs of text.

2.4 FOOTNOTES
A footnote is placed (at the bottom of the page) by placing \\footnote... next to the
word1 where a footnote is required.

2.5 SIMPLE GLOSSARY AND ACRONYMS

Entries of common terms/phrases can made in the glossary for easy reference. Any
glossary entry might be referred to later in the text by use of the \gls command.
Similarly, entries of abbreviations, may be recalled later in the text by use of the
\acrshor, \acrlong and \acrfull commands among others. Note that a valid use
of these commands requires that the glossary and abbrevaiations entries be filled in
the relevant file, namely, front-glossary-abbreviations. For more details and
advanced customization refer to the documentation of the glossaries package of
Talbot (2021).

1 Thisis the footnote that was referred to earlier. Notice that as per the institution’s specifications the
line spacing in the footnote is automatically a single space. However, large/many footnotes are not
advisable.

14
 CHAPTER 3

FLOATS, CROSS-REFERENCES AND

BIBLIOGRAPHY

3.1 FLOATS
Floats is a term that is used in the TEX world to refer collectively to components
which cannot be broken across pages, i.e. it must be placed entirely on a single page.
Commonly occurring floats are figure and table.

3.1.1 Figures
As is commonly said, a picture is worth several words. Anyway, figures are indispensable
quite commonplace in all forms of written material. Figures are handled by the figure
block along with the \includegraphics command. In order to ensure that the figure
fit satisfactorily on the page, its width and height must be tuned appropriately. To this
end, one sets the width and height options of \includegraphics appropriately. For
example, to simply place a figure tux one does:

\begin{figure}
\centering
\includegraphics[width=0.25\textwidth]{tux}
\caption{Tux is a friendly penguin. Being very sociable,
he has many friends of different kinds across age-
groups. We will shortly meet his friends.}
\end{figure}

which yields
Figure 3.1: Tux is a friendly penguin. Being very sociable, he has many friends of
different kinds across age-groups. We will shortly meet his friends.

The caption of the figure is appropriately spaced and justified. Text in surrounding
paragraphs are spaced appropriately as well. Quite often, one wants to present several
related images in an array. As an example, consider the following snippet where we
want to place eight images in two rows

Listing 3.1: Tux with friends

\begin{figure}[h]
\subfloat[Tux]{
\includegraphics[width=0.248\textwidth]{tux}
}
\subfloat[Adiumy]{
\includegraphics[width=0.248\textwidth]{adiumy}
}
\subfloat[GNU Head]{
\includegraphics[width=0.248\textwidth]{gnuhead}
}
\subfloat[Emule]{
\includegraphics[width=0.248\textwidth]{emule}
}
\par
\subfloat[Konqi]{
\includegraphics[width=0.248\textwidth]{konqi}
}
\subfloat[Katie]{
\includegraphics[width=0.248\textwidth]{katie}
}
\subfloat[Wiber]{
\includegraphics[width=0.248\textwidth]{wiber}
}
\subfloat[Camelia]{

16
 \includegraphics[width=0.248\textwidth]{camelia}
}
\caption{Tux with his various friends}
\label{fig:tux-with-friends}
\end{figure}

which produces the following array of images:

(a) Tux (b) Adiumy (c) GNU Head (d) Emule

(e) Konqi (f) Katie (g) Wiber (h) Camelia

Figure 3.2: Tux with his various friends

While this is a simple example, more complex layouts are easily achieved by clever
resizing of the images along with the use of \par and \hfill as necessary and patience.

In this example we have used an additional [h] option to the figure block. This is an
optional position specifier and can be used to somewhat influence the position on the
page where the image gets placed.

17
3.2 TABLES
The story of tables is quite similar to that of figures. The snippet

Listing 3.2: Elegant table

\begin{table}
\captionabove{Shown below is a simple elegant table with
a very
long caption. Tables are quite helpful in organizing
information in a presentable manner.}
\centering
\begin{tabular}{ll}
\toprule
Table & Head \\
\midrule
stuff & stuff \\
stuff & stuff \\
stuff & stuff \\
stuff & stuff \\
stuff & stuff \\
\bottomrule
\end{tabular}
\label{tab:elegant-table}
\end{table}

produces the following table

Table 3.1: Shown below is a simple elegant table with a very long caption. Tables are
quite helpful in organizing information in a presentable manner.

Table Head
stuff stuff
stuff stuff
stuff stuff
stuff stuff
stuff stuff

18
Note: In tables one must use the \captionabove command instead of \caption to
place captions. Only then will the spacing around the captions be appropriate.

Vertical rules in tables are not only very unpleasant but they are largely unnecessary. If
one wants to have vertical rules anyway, one does

\begin{table}[h]
\captionabove{Shown below is a table. Vertical rules
make make for unappealing tables. Notice that the
caption is justified and single-spaced}
\centering
\allowverticalruleshere
\begin{tabular}{@{} |l|l| @{}}
\toprule
Table & Head \\
\toprule
stuff & stuff \\
stuff & stuff \\
stuff & stuff \\
stuff & stuff \\
stuff & stuff \\
\bottomrule
\end{tabular}
\end{table}

which yields

Table 3.2: Shown below is a table. Vertical rules make make for unappealing tables.
Notice that the caption is justified and single-spaced

Table Head
stuff stuff
stuff stuff
stuff stuff
stuff stuff
stuff stuff

19
Notice that in order to ensure properly spaced vertical rules the command
\allowverticalruleshere must be placed above the tabular block. Tables too,
being floats, can be supplied optional arguments of the position specifier(s) as has been
done in the foregoing snippet. Far more complex tables are possible as demonstrated in
the template file accompanying iitmdissertation.

3.3 CROSS-REFERENCES
To refer to previous instances in the document, one uses cross references. Almost
all LATEX blocks which are numbered have provide some mechanism to enable cross-
referencing so that they may be referred to from different parts elsewhere in the document.
The fundamental way to handle cross-references is by the use of the

• \label command to place a reference tag, and, by the use of the

• \ref command to refer to the element by said tag.

The keen-eyed reader might have noticed the use of the \label commands in listings
3.1 and 3.2. Now, an example to illustrate how we might refer to those elements by
using the \ref command. The snippet

I invite you to look at a photo of Tux with his

friends here in Figure \ref{fig:tux-with-friends}.
While there, you might also want to re-inspect
how one might set an elegant table as in table
\ref{tab:elegant-table}.

yields

I invite you to look at a photo of Tux with

his friends here in Figure 3.2. While there,
you might also want to re-inspect how one
might set an elegant table as in table 3.1.

20
3.4 BIBLIOGRAPHY
As alluded to earlier, the recommended way to handle bibliography references is by the
use of a BibTEX-formatted file containing all the references. iitmdissertation uses
natbib to set the references and citations in the correct format. To cite an item in the
bibliography file references.bib, one uses the \cite command with the key of the
entry in the .bib file. Thus, on writing

this is a very nice paper \cite{Stroock_Varadhan_1971}.

we get that this is a very nice paper Stroock and Varadhan (1971). While we are on
the topic, let me recommend another classic: Nash (1951). Or perhaps, some of my
personal favorites might interest you if you work in related fields: see Chernoff (1972),
Wald (2004), Zhang (2014) or Shannon (1948) for a nice selection. I must also mention
that the work of Polyanskiy et al. (2010) is well regarded. Observe that these links are
clickable only in the draft mode of iitmdissertation. Note that no references to
bibliographic entries will be set in the document unless one has

\begin{document}
.
.
\placeBibliographyReferences{references.bib}
.
.
\end{document}

in the main document.

21
 CHAPTER 4

MATHEMATICS

Mathematics – need more be said? iitmdissertation loads the mathtools package

by default. Moreover, predefined environments for Definition, Theorem, Corollary,
Lemma and Proofs are provided. Further, the proof environment is customized to use
the solid QED symbol by default.

Equation numbering is as per the institute guidelines and so is spacing around math
environments. For instance

\begin{align}
e^{i\pi} + 1 & = 0 \\
e^{i\pi} & = -1
\end{align}

produces the following insightful equations

𝑒𝑖𝜋 + 1 = 0 (4.1)

𝑒𝑖𝜋 = −1. (4.2)

produces correctly numbered and spaced equations. Futher, iitmdissertation also

enables splitting of align block across multiple pages, i.e, it sets \allowdisplaybreaks
by default.

The example theorem-proof snippet

\begin{theorem}
\label{thm:insightful-thm}
It holds that 1 + 1 = 2.
\end{theorem}
\begin{proof}
 Immediately we see that
\[
1 + 1 = 2.
\]
The proof is complete.
\end{proof}

which yields
Theorem 4.1. It holds that 1 + 1 = 2.
Proof. Immediately we see that
1 + 1 = 2.

The proof is complete. ■

Additionally, approprirately styled definition, proposition, lemma, corollary
and remark blocks are also available. More advanced users might find the excellent
thmtools [Chou (2020)] package of great use for advanced specification of theorem-like
environments.

Under the option of smplmath, various common math operators for argmax, argmin,
expectation E [], probability measure P [] delimiters are provided. Additionally various
common delimiters such as parentheses, curly braces, square brackets and angle brackets
that are automatically resizing are also provided –

   * !+
© 1 ª 𝑛 1 1
­   ®® ,
­ 𝑘 1 + 𝑥 2 𝑥 − 𝑦1𝑛
𝑥 + 1𝑥
« ¬

No more messing around \left and \right commands.

These may be enable with the option smplmath, which is off by default and can be
activated with :

\documentclass

24
 Table 4.1: Various common math commands that may be useful

Command Description

\rdbr round brackets (parentheses)

\flbr flower (curly) braces
\sqbr square brackets
\ceil ceiling
\floor floor
\reci reciprocal
\EX expectation operator with square delimiters
that resize automatically – takes one
optional argument (which is the subscript)
and one mandatory argument: \EX[1]{X}
in math mode produces E1 [𝑋].
\PR probability operator with square delimiters
that resize automatically – takes one
optional argument (which is the subscript)
and one mandatory argument: \PR[1]{X}
produces P1 [𝑋].

[phd,
draft
smplmath]
{iitmdissertation}

Note: Like many things in life, these delimiters and operators are not perfect. They
work quite well for the average case. There are indeed cases where they do not function
as expected. Hence, they have been placed behind an option, which the user can decide
to enable.

25
 APPENDIX A

GENERAL NOTES

The appendix is the place for main text matter that did not make it into any chapter
for whatever reasons. Quite often, lengthy detailed explanations, which may otherwise
detract from the general flow of a chapter are sometimes placed in an appendix where
they may be treated in nice detail. Then, the readers may be referred to the appendix.
That way, those who deem it important can still have a look at the fine details while
those other readers who do not wish to get into too many details may avoid it. This, of
course, is just one of the multitude of possibilities of why one might place material in
an appendix. After all, it is the author’s choice as to what goes where and in what detail.

In this chapter, we provide further references regarding the building blocks of

iitmdissertation. We depend on a lot of high-quality LATEX packages that work in
harmony to ensure that the user does not have to worry to much with minute details. In
most cases, packages and/or their facilities are customized to ensure compliance with
the guidelines laid down by the institute.

Note: Ideally, the end user should not have to customize any of the lower level options
as there are already sane defaults in place or they have already been modified to comply
with the specification.

A.1 SOURCE FILES

The user must avoid editing the source files as far as possible. Commands do not always
do what one expects of them unless of course they are invoked in the right context
(and/or situation). iitmdissertation has been extensively tested in many scenarious.
However, it is very much possible that bugs exist. Most errors in compilation arise
from incorrect use of packages and/or their facilites. Take care to ensure that you follow
best practices while using external packages. If you encounter an insurmountable issue
despite your best efforts, you are most welcome to contact the author for help.

Ensure that these files are not tampered with at any cost. The accompanying template
will not compile (and produce a PDF) if even one of these is missing. These are
as follows: iitm.bst, iitmdissertation.cls, iitmdissertation.sty and the
folder zz-imp.

A.2 PACKAGES
Numerous packages are available to a LATEX user. Additionally, users might have their
own set of macros/commands from previous use. Both, Commands to load these
packages, i.e, the \usepackage commands and the user-defined macros are placed in
the preamble of the document:

\documentclass
[phd]
{iitmdissertation}

\usepackage{...}
% user-defined macros
\begin{document}
.
.
.
\end{document}

For any package, always consult the official package manual and/or reference for specific
instructions on how to load them and the range of options available. If you run into
strange issues, feel free to ask for send me an email or ask on the PhD or MS mailing
lists.

Note: As is the case for many other programming languages, there are lot of LATEX

28
code snippets floating around at various forums on the internet. While using these code
snippets may (or may not) alleviate issues, it is highly plausible that such code can have
undesirable side effects, just from being placed in a document. Further, a single code
snippet can, in general, have different effects depending on where it is placed in the
document. Therefore, the user is urged to inspect an official manual and/or reference
before inserting arbitrary code into the document. The code of iitmdissertation
largely conforms to the best practices and strictly abides by the documentation of the
packages that it loads.

A.2.1 Some useful packages

Quite a few packages are loaded by iitmdissertation which are very commonplace
in a standard document. In the event that certain customization of one or more of the
facilities offered by these packages is required, the user is urged to look at the respective
package’s documentation.

29
Table A.1: A list of commonly required (pre-loaded) packages along with links to their
documentation

Package(s) Note(s)
enumitem handles all itemized lists and descriptions [López (2019)]
booktabs & array handle all facilities related to tables [Els (2020); Team and
Mittelbach (2021)]
Caution: Although, there are many table-related packages
for LATEX, use of booktabs and array is the recommended
way to handle tabulation
xcolor handles all color related facilities. This package is loaded
with the usenames,svgnames option for a total of 170 color
options. Consult page 43 of the xcolor manual for these
color names [Team and Kern (2021)]
Caution: Trying to load xcolor with other options might
cause issues (i.e, option clashes in LATEX parlance). If you
really must have new color(s) you can define it using the
\definecolor command.
subcaption This is the recommended package for handling sub-figures and
sub-captions. This is loaded by default with correct options to
ensure proper spacing around (sub-)captions. [Sommerfeldt
(2020)]
multirow This is the recommended package for handling tabular-cells
spanning multiple rows. This is not loaded by default, since
it is not essential.[van Oostrum (2020)]
glossaries This is the default package used to handle glossaries and the
abbreviations in the prematter. iitmdissertation provides
defaults for a simple glossary customized to match the official
guidelines of the institute as can be seen in the template.
[Talbot (2021)]
nomencl This is the default package used to handle the notation chapter
in the prematter. iitmdissertation provides defaults
for a simple notations chapter conforming to the guidelines.
[Veytsman et al. (2021)]

30
 REFERENCES

1. Chernoff, H., Sequential Analysis and Optimal Design. Society for Industrial and
Applied Mathematics, 1972. ISBN 9780898710069. URL http://epubs.siam.org/
doi/book/10.1137/1.9781611970593.

2. Chou, Y. (2020). thmtools – extensions to theorem environments. URL https:

//ctan.org/pkg/thmtools.

3. Els, D. (2020). booktabs – publication quality tables in LATEX. URL https://ctan.

org/pkg/booktabs.

4. López, J. B. (2019). enumitem – control layout of itemize, enumerate, description.

URL https://ctan.org/pkg/enumitem.

5. Nash, J. (1951). Non-cooperative games. Annals of Mathematics, 54(2), 286295. ISSN

0003-486X. URL https://www.jstor.org/stable/1969529.

6. Polyanskiy, Y., H. V. Poor, and S. Verdu (2010). Channel coding rate in the finite
blocklength regime. IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, 56(5), 23072359. ISSN
1557-9654.

7. Shannon, C. E. (1948). A mathematical theory of communication. The Bell System

Technical Journal, 27(3), 379423. ISSN 0005-8580.

8. Sommerfeldt, A. (2020). subcaption – subcaption support for sub-captions. URL

https://ctan.org/pkg/subcaption.

9. Stroock, D. W. and S. R. S. Varadhan (1971). Diffusion processes with boundary

conditions. Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics, 24(2), 147225. ISSN
00103640, 10970312. URL https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/
cpa.3160240206.

10. Talbot, N. (2021). glossaries – create glossaries and lists of acronyms. URL
https://ctan.org/pkg/glossaries.

11. Team, T. L. and D. U. Kern (2021). Driver-independent color extensions for LATEX and
pdfLATEX. URL https://ctan.org/pkg/xcolor.

12. Team, T. L. and F. Mittelbach (2021). array – extending the array and tabular
environments. URL https://ctan.org/pkg/array.

13. van Oostrum, P. (2020). multirow – create tabular cells spanning multiple rows. URL
https://ctan.org/pkg/multirow.

31
14. Veytsman, B., B. Shandl, L. Netherton, and C. Radhakrishnan (2021). nomencl –
produce lists of symbols as in nomenclatur. URL https://ctan.org/pkg/nomencl.

15. Wald, A., Sequential Analysis. Courier Corporation, 2004. ISBN 9780486439129.

16. Zhang, Y. (2014). Bounded gaps between primes. Annals of Mathematics, 179(3),
11211174. ISSN 0003-486X. URL https://www.jstor.org/stable/24522787.

32
 CURRICULUM VITAE

NAME Firstname Lastname

DATE OF BIRTH 01 January 2022

EDUCATION QUALIFICATIONS

1970 The first degree

Institution Wherever
Specialization Whatever

2038 The previous degree

Institution Wherever
Specialization Whatever

Institution Wherever
Specialization Whatever
Registration Date Whenever

33
 COMMITTEE

Chairperson Dr. Name

Whatever
Wherever

Guide(s) Dr. Name

Whatever
Wherever

Dr. Name
Whatever
Wherever

Member(s) Dr. Name

Whatever
Wherever

Dr. Name
Whatever
Wherever

Dr. Name
Whatever
Wherever

35