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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Many questions are also answered in doc.pdf.

Q. I get an error in macros.tex that \DeclareUrlCommand can't be found.

A. Your TeX distribution has an old version of url.sty. Update your TeX distribution. Or download a more recent version from CTAN:

http://ctan.org/get/macros/latex/contrib/misc/url.sty

and just copy it to this directory. TeX/LaTeX first look in the current directory for all included files, and then proceed to look in the other configured locations. You can also change the standard locations by modifying your TEXINPUTS or texmf.cnf, but such details are far beyond the scope of this document.

Q. I get a warning from some-package that some-option is obsolete. Is this ok?

A. Yes. These options were necessary for my LaTeX installation (MacTeX 2007), and I'd rather leave them rather than have a student's thesis rejected because they used an older LaTeX. Feel free to remove the options in your copy, however.

Q. Can I modify this template for use at a different university? Can I distribute the modified template?

A. By all means. This package has been released to the public domain which means that you can do what you like with it!

Q. I hate that the Lists of Figures and Tables have all lines of the entries indented by such a huge amount!

(Note: this is only enabled when gpscopy)

A. First, be sure to use the optional argument on \caption to provide shortened titles for the LoF & LoT:

\caption[short and sweet]{the much more lengthy caption
    possibly stretching across multiple lines}

Otherwise look in ubcdiss.cls for the lines with \@tabprefixlen. Comment out the lines in Option 1 and uncomment those in Option 2 to cause subsequent lines in an entry to be typeset with a hanging indent.

Q. I'm trying to add the XXX package, but I now get LaTeX failures.

A. The ubcdiss template is fundamentally just a configuration of of standard LaTeX packages. When conflicts occur, it's generally because of a conflict between two different packages.

To resolve such conflicts, start out by commenting some of the more troublesome packages. The most typical culprits are the natbib and hyperref packages. Keep commenting out packages until your build failures disappear. Then decide which package is the most useful and worthy of being kept!

Q. How do I use different fonts?

Edit diss.tex and look for the section using fontspec. You'll likely want to use XeLaTeX (xelatex), an enhanced TeX that can make use of your platform fonts. If you have a favourite font (I like Adobe's Minion Pro which ships with Acrobat Reader), XeTeX provides an "easy" way to use them.

(Aside: probably unlikely now, but should you need to rebuild xetex then you may need to regenerate your formats for the new xetex binary; the easiest way seems to be:

  $ sudo fmtutil-sys --refresh

If all of this seems like gobbledygook, then find a capable friend.)