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package is obsolete -- use\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}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.