[Tex/LaTex] Good LaTeX preambles for math thesis

best practicespreamblethesis

Can someone provide me an example of a nice preamble to write a math thesis?
I am currently using

 \documentclass[12pt]{article} 
\topmargin -15mm

\textheight 24truecm   
\textwidth 16truecm    
\oddsidemargin 5mm
\evensidemargin 5mm   
\setlength\parskip{10pt}
\pagestyle{empty}          

\usepackage{boxedminipage}
\usepackage{amsfonts}
\usepackage{amsmath} 
\usepackage{amssymb}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{amsthm}
\usepackage{t1enc}
\usepackage{subfig}

\newtheorem{theorem}{Theorem}[section]
\newtheorem{lemma}[theorem]{Lemma}
\newtheorem{proposition}[theorem]{Proposition}
\newtheorem{corollary}[theorem]{Corollary}
\newtheorem{definition}[theorem]{Definition}
\newtheorem{example}[theorem]{Example}

Best Answer

In general, I suggest to start with a preamble that is as small as possible and to add packages and/or custom commands as the need for them arises.

With regard to your code sample:

  • Don't fiddle with \topmargin, \textheight and similar commands. If you want to change the margins of your document, use the geometry or typearea packages.

  • If you really must denote new paragraphs by additional spacing instead of indentation, replace \setlength\parskip{10pt} with the parskip package. See this answer for details.

  • The t1enc package is obsolete -- use \usepackage[T1]{fontenc} instead. See l2tabu for other obsolete packages/commands.

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