JCU LyX Layout

What might be interesting to all you James Cook University or JCU folk out there (yeah, you know who you are!), is the attached zip file to this post. It’s a LyX layout that automagically inserts the required details into your thesis (Honours or PhD), assuming that you give the correct details to LyX. Just so you know, LyX is a WYSIWYM (what-you-see-is-what-you-mean) editor for LaTeX, which makes things very easy to make great looking documents. It’s free, it’s more powerful and easier than M$ Word, and if you’re not using it, it should be because you just found about it.

Unzip the files, place them in your .lyx document directory and tell LyX to use that layout. See the Document menu and then Settings, then Document Class and choose ‘Local Layout’. LyX might warn you about something, but just make sure all the unzipped files are in the same folder as your original document itself.

Now, generally near the start of the document, use the available document layouts to create a:

• Title
• Author (with your name)
• Degree (with something like ‘Bachelor Of Information Technology with Honours’)
• School (something like ‘Information Technology’)
• University (with ‘James Cook University’), and
• Crest Filename with ‘jcucrestcolour.jpg’, the name of the JCU logo you have (it’s in the zip file, but if you’ve got a specific JCU school pic then you can change it.  EDIT: It’s the old logo, but see below for the new one).

You can add Acknowledgements and an Abstract if you want, and then everything else like Table of Contents and Figures etc.

When you start your document, insert this ERT code:

\pagenumbering{arabic}

to start the document numbering correctly.

That’s it! Render the document as PDF using LyX and see what happens. If you find errors, it’s because you’re missing some LaTeX packages. Configure your typeset program (MikTeX if you’re on Windows) to automatically download missing packages, then run Reconfigure on LyX, restart it, and go again. Make sure you’re on the net first!

Hopefully you guys from JCU can get some use out of this. Otherwise, if someone (or anyone!) wants to let JCU staff know about this thesis template go ahead. I hear that some people are (still!) using Microsoft Word and having pain. Free yourself and get LyX and LaTeX, it’s the best move you’ll make for your work. Not to mention they’re all free..forget paying real money to Micro$oft.

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