This is an entirely optional LaTeX style file plus template for P&A
dissertations at LSU. I hope that you will find it useful, but you are
welcome to use other templates. The goals are i) to predefine settings
that comply with LSU's dissertation formatting guide, and ii)
incorporate some accessibility features. If you begin from the
template I hope it will be relatively straightforward to work material
in. If you are porting content, I would advise porting the text into
the template files rather than just substituting files, as everything
is designed to work together, and accessibility features in particular
will require modifications to existing files.

The Graduate School requires that when you submit your final
dissertation you certify that you have made best efforts to make your
document accessible. This template represents my 'best efforts'. The
main accessibility features incorporated are:

1. The hyperref package is used to add document-level metadata such as
document title, author, and language. Make sure to modify this block
in the template.

2. The tagpdf package is doing most of the heavy lifting. This is
tagging headings, paragraphs, equations, figures, and tables. In
particular note that each paragraph show be enclosed in a tagging
block as seen in chap1.tex. Also, tagging blocks are not allowed to be
split over pages, so manual breaks should be inserted as the VERY
LAST STEP in production of your file. There is an example in
chap1.tex. Tagpdf also allows specification of alt-text for figures.
Tagpdf is an experimental package, but the best we have. It may have
bad interactions with other packages and I would recommend using as
few external packages as you can get away with.

3. The axessibility package adds a read aloud version of each
equation.

Please let me know if you have problems and questions. This is a functional work
in progress and not final or elegant. It's LaTeX, so it may never be
elegant. Please also let me know what is unclear so I can improve this
document over time. 

Using this template should make it easier to satisfy the graduate
school's regulations, but does not substitute for reading them
yourself. You should be familiar with the processes and requirements
at:

https://www.lsu.edu/graduateschool/currentstudents/theses_and_dissertations/index.php

and in particular the "Formatting Guidelines for Theses and
Dissertations" document linked there.

Rob Hynes (rhynes@lsu.edu)

v.1.0.1, January 4, 2021

NOTES

1. Please make sure to update the document information in the block
beginning \hypersetup

2. The template assumes that sub-sections are in separate files loaded
with \input statements. I find this the most manageable way to
organize a document of this size. Besides the chapters and appendices
of your thesis, this also includes the copyright page (optional),
dedication (optional), epigraph (optional), acknowledgements
(optional), abstract (required), and vita (required). If you do not
use the optional sections, then you should comment out the \input
statement.

3. As noted above, please look at chap1.tex for examples of usage of
the tagging commands from the tagpdf package (\tagstructbegin, etc). 

4. The bibliography is setup to use bibtex with natbib. You are
welcome to change the reference handling, and the graduate school
leaves a lot of leeway for formatting of references. You should use a
reference style appropriate to your sub-field. This varies across the
department, so consult your research advisor. If you use it as
written, note the usage of \citep "(author et al. 2020)" vs \citet
"author et al. (2020)". The form you use should make sense in the
context of a sentence. Numerical citations are also fine if this is
what you are used to. See the natbib documentation for how to specify this.

FILES

lsuthesis.cls			Modified version of LaTeX book.cls to
					accomodate LSU style 
template.tex			Template for the whole document.
					Skeleton to input other files
axessibility.sty		Axessibility package to read aloud equations

title.tex				Define title page (required)
copyright.tex			Define copyright page (optional)
dedication  			Define dedication page (optional)
epigraph			        Define epigraph page (optional)
acknowledgments		Define acknowledgments (optional)
abstract		       		Define abstract page (required)
vita					Define vita page (required)

chap1.tex			Example of a chapter, including a
					figure, table, equation, and manual page break 
app1.tex				Example of an appendix

template.bib			Example bibtex references

figure.pdf			Placeholder figure to show inclusion syntax

regen.sh				Bash script for automating the
					multiple steps of recompilation

CHANGELOG

1.0.1	Incorporating axessibility.sty, editing README. No change to
		template or style file
