EvoThesis

the idea

assuming that nobody can write a book in a couple of days, there are a number of things we should take into account. a thesis should grow, just like evolution didn't happen in one day. we don't know what is yet to come, so the framework whithin which the book is developed should provide maximum flexibility. we want

to write piece by piece, one fragment at a time
each fragment might contain different supporting data, e.g. pictures or pdfs
we want to work from different locations, machines, and diverse operating systems
we don't want a huge mess in the end
we need to keep track of certain key features such as citations in a consistent manner

This project was designed to fulfill these requirements. it heavily relies on the markdown language and pandoc to provide the freedom to switch between formats, whenever necessary.

usage

project structure

a project should come with a shallow structure containing a number of fragments. each fragment is contained in a sub-folder. this sub-folder contains a single markdown document as master source. it can also contain everything else related to the fragment, e.g. pictures in subfolders or source information like audio recordings.

a centralized book-keeping system for citations is established by a bibtex file library.bib in the main project folder. below structure is an example. it is important to have fragment master files suffixed with .md.

project main folder
│   Makefile (created by setup)
│   library.bib (export from e.g. Zotero)
│   index (automatically created by make update)   
│
└───fragment 1
│   │   fragment.md
│   │   Makefile (created by make update)
│   │
│   └───supporting information (optional)
│       │   picture.jpg
│       │   very_important_document.pdf
│       │   ...
│   
└───fragment 2
    │   master.md
    │   somebody_worked_on_this_document_in_a_shitty_format.docx

general usage idea

the project can be converted into different formats on two levels. on the project level, all existing fragments can be concatenated into one document, e.g. a pdf. this way, the thesis will be build in the end. on the fragment level, we can convert to other formats, too.

fragment and thesis conversion

each fragment and the whole project come with a make file. to create a pdf, simply use

make help

to display all the available options. for example, make pdf will create a pdf from the markdown source document.

as the thesis grows, more and more fragments might occumulate in the main project folder. simply use make update in the main folder to get all of them ready to be converted.

setup

tbc

status

this project is growing with the people who use it. it thus provides functionality that is needed during the process of writing a thesis from the beginning. everything necessary for beautiful styling will be added once necessary.

thempel/EvoThesis