[Tex/LaTex] Writing and Managing Thesis in LaTeX

Question

I'm in the process of thesis writing. I'm LaTeX newbie and have its limited knowledge and experience. I'm thinking to use LaTeX or LyX for my thesis. Which one is better for thesis write up? If I go with LaTeX then how can I use it more efficiently. In case of LaTeX I'd like to have separate .tex file for each chapter and each chapter will have its own bibliography. Then how can I combine all chapters and other issue would of cross references. I have to my Univ. template for thesis write up. I'd highly appreciate if someone provide me general guidelines to manage and write a long document like thesis in LaTeX.

Answer 1

The following code is derived from my template code (currently only in svn). My old template can be found on this site.

It shows how to organise chapters using include and includeonly. Also numbering of pages at the beginning, main part and appendix are set up. having a bib for each chapter can be set up using biblatex, which I have not tried yet.

...

\addbibresource{bib/BibtexDatabase}

\includeonly{
 content/Title,
 content/0-Abstract,
 content/0-Introduction,
 content/1-Theory,
 content/2-Experiments,
 content/3-Results,
 content/4-Discussion,
}

\listfiles

\begin{document}

% required for hyperref (not displayed)
\pagenumbering{alph}\setcounter{page}{1}%
\pagestyle{empty}

% -- title page --
\include{content/Title}
\cleardoublepage

% -- abstract --
\include{content/0-Abstract} 
\cleardoublepage

\frontmatter
\pagestyle{scrheadings}

% -- table of contents --
%
% add table of contents to pdf bookmarks
\pdfbookmark[1]{\contentsname}{toc}
\tableofcontents

% --- Main Document --- --- --- --- --- --- ---
\mainmatter
%
\include{content/0-Introduction}
\include{content/1-Theory}
\include{content/2-Experiments}
\include{content/3-Results}
\include{content/4-Discussion}

% -- bibliography --
% (must be placed _before_ appendix)
\printbibliography[%
  heading=bibintoc, % (bibintoc, bibnumbered)
]   

%% -- list of figures and tables --
\clearpage
\listoffigures
\listoftables

% --- Appendix --- --- --- --- --- --- ---
\appendix % switch to appendix mode
\include{content/Z-Appendix}

\end{document}