Hope this is not a stupid question but I'm a newbie to LaTeX. I am using LaTeX to write my Humanities thesis and while I am concentrating on the content at the moment I am just using a template I found on-line to work with. I am the only one in the department using LaTeX so there are no guidelines/template in-house to use. There are certain elements I have to adhere to such as what headers and footers contain, but noting drastic.
My aim is, partly to help learn LaTeX, is to write up my own document for the finalised thesis. I have read some guides and it appears to me that the document class book is suited for a thesis as I can put frontmatter mainmatter and backmatter. I then get the sense that memoir class is based on book class but has more packages by default.
I suppose what this boils down to is if I use the memoir class is it easier to customise the document?
PS: I use LaTeX on Ubuntu 14.04 with TeXstudio and compile with pdflatex and biber for my references.
Best Answer
Yes,
memoiris ideal for a humanities thesis. I am using it for mine.The
memoirclass incorporates the functions of a large number of commonly used packages to provide a more consistent interface, and is designed to be easy to customize. So instead of loading a dozen possibly conflicting packages---geometryto change margins, andsetspaceto change line spacing, andtitlesecto format section headings, etc., etc.---you just specifymemoiras your document class and use its settings, all lovingly detailed in the documentation attexdoc memoir. There's even an example of how to set up an academic thesis in the manual.