zedxpro/classic-two-sided-xelatex-thesis-template

This project is a ready made document template for writing an academic thesis or dissertation using LaTeX, a typesetting system many researchers use to produce polished, print quality documents. Unlike a typical single sided document, this template is built specifically for two sided printing, the kind used in bound books, with margins calculated so that facing pages line up into a balanced, symmetrical spread once the thesis is printed and bound. The template puts a strong emphasis on typography, the visual style and spacing of text on the page. Because it relies on a compiler called XeLaTeX rather than the more common pdfLaTeX, it can use any font already installed on your system, along with fine details like proper letter pairings and careful spacing that make long runs of text easier to read. Page headers change automatically to reflect whichever chapter you are currently in, and footnotes are spaced out carefully to avoid a cluttered look. The document is organized into separate files for different parts of the thesis, such as the front matter, individual chapters, and the bibliography, rather than being written as one long file. This makes it easier to work on one chapter at a time without scrolling through the entire document. Because the template depends on modern font handling and packages that only work properly with the XeLaTeX engine, trying to compile it with the older standard pdfLaTeX engine will not work. To build your thesis, you need three tools installed: xelatex itself to compile the document, biber to process citations and produce your bibliography correctly, and latexmk, which is strongly recommended because it automatically reruns the compiler as many times as needed to get the table of contents, cross references, and citations all correct. Once everything is installed, compiling the finished thesis is done with a single command in the terminal that tells latexmk to run using the xelatex engine.