Instructions

Quarto Chapters

Quarto is an open-source document preparation system.
If you are using the latest version of Rstudio, quarto is included. Otherwise, follow the link to download the standalone version. There is also a VS Code extension.
Each chapter is written using quarto in Rstudio.
These .qmd files are stored in chapters_quarto.
Quarto features markdown syntax, and can mix and match code chunks from a range of languages.
Figures can be dynamically generated with quarto, which also controls all figure options.
Models can be built and cached using quarto, which saves you time.

The project is set up to render only latex, but you can change this to render individual pdf/html instances of chapters.
Once you have finished writing a chapter, go into main.tex and edit the CHAPTERS section to include all your chapters.
Authorship, declarations, and abstracts are also handled by main.tex.
Once all chapters are finished, you are ready to knit your final thesis.
I am an R user, so I have written an R script that renders each .qmd chapter, reformats the .tex of each chapter, and then produces the thesis using the .cls file included.
NB: reformatting the .tex is important. Pandoc adds preamables which main.tex does not want.
(Feel free to create a PR to contribute scripts in other languages that achieve this.)
My R script uses TinyTex to produce the final thesis, but this is not necessary - uploading a .zip of the thesis to overleaf also works perfectly.

Due to the fonts used, LuaLatex must be used to compile.
If you use TinyTex like me, you will need to additionally install the luatex85 package (there is a line in finalise.r that does this). Overleaf might need you to select this option via the menu.
Biber (not BibLatex) must also be used. Overleaf does this automatically, but I had to specify this for TinyTex.

This template is based on the UoM thesis template found on Overleaf and written by Alex Casson.
Additional improvements for functionality were made by David Petrescu.
Justification for not using Quarto books: this implementation keeps each chapter (potentially including Docker containers etc) separate, and lets Latex (via a pre-existing thesis template) handle the formatting. IMO this is simpler and more language-agnostic. NB this means that most formatting options (margins, fonts etc) are dealt with by main.tex or the .cls file.
I use Rstudio, but there is no reason why this would not work with any IDE that supports quarto (however I won't be much help re issues for other IDEs).
To-Do:
- Write guide to Dockerising chapters/entire thesis.
- Write more scripts for finalising thesis