Hello,
Tobias Wolf wrote:
today I went to work to make up my mind about whether it would be a
good idea to go ahead and produce my BSc. Thesis with ConTeXt.
It's clear, I'm very much attracted to it's approach, I do like the
syntax and the focus on PDF output (I never used DVI before) et cetera
pp.
As John already pointed out: Using "pdflatex" this is also possible with
LaTeX (well, both use PDFTeX behind the scenes).
I've seen Hrabans' ciee juxtaposition of ConTeXt and LaTeX, and after
searching the list I am not sure whether going for a KOMA class
wouldn't be better considering that I definitely don't have time
develop my own ConTeXt environment this time.
Well, the question is how much you want to change; I think one can (in
both cases) live with the defaults provided (plus some minor changes).
The defaults in LaTeX are arguably better, ConTeXt on the other hand
allows changes much easier. I have also the feeling that ConTeXt's
figure placement is better - at least I had so far not as much problems
as with LaTeX. (In LaTeX frequently all figures are collected at the
very end of the document -- or in between when one does a \clearpage.)
I've also seen the MS thesis of Han The Thanh. It's good. But I would
need something more suited for natural sciences that accomodates
plenty of figures and references. Also I would like to "cloak" my
thesis by avoiding Computer Modern.
Do ready-made "academic templates" by one of you experts exist - or
do you dissuade me from "just using" ConTeXt for for writing academic
literature?
One reason to favour LaTeX is that many publishing houses are accepting
LaTeX submission, while for ConTeXt less so. This is maybe less a
problem for BSc/MSc theses, but for PhD theses, where one frequently
includes some (own, published) papers, this means extra work. Having
said that, I have written my diploma (~ MSc) thesis in physics using
ConTeXt and I do plan to do so for my PhD as well.
I can send you the environment I used;¹ the layout could probably done
better, but I think (hope) that it looks quite ok; I used Latin
Modern/Computer Modern at 12pt on A4. (For my PhD theses I'll use
probably use octavo/A5.) Changing the used font is easy, but one has to
find one which contains all characters needed (incl. maths symbols,
small caps [if needed], AMS Math symbols [or the font should fit to
those AMS fonts], etc.)
Tobias
¹ http://www.physik.fu-berlin.de/~tburnus/thesis/thesis.pdf, 5.6 MiB
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