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Sample Thesis Online at CA

Getting started on writing your thesis is always tough. Figuring out margins, headers, footnotes, and spacing can be a real headache. Seeing how someone else solved all the formatting requirements set by the Graduate School can be a time saver. If you wish to see a sample thesis in nroff and troff look on the CA machine in /x/stacey/Thesis.

If you do not have a CA account, you may examine CA files like this:

% ns ca ls -l /x/stacey/Thesis

total 1
drwxr-xr-x  2 stacey 1024 Apr 4 09:16 Laser
drwxr-xr-x  2 stacey 1024 Apr 4 09:19 Nroff
ns: 0 bytes sent
ns: 118 bytes received


% ns ca ls /x/stacey/Thesis/Laser

COVER
Doall
Intro
Notice
Printtest
README
RUN
bot.margin
chap1
chap2
chap3
chap4
eqn.fix
expl.VM
how.to.preview
prelim
ref
refcover
roman.numerals
top.thesis
trigger.words
ns: 228 bytes received
ns: 0 bytes sent
%

To look at a single file, you could type:

ns ca cat /x/stacey/Thesis/Laser/chap1|more

To copy a certain file to your current working directory, type:

ns ca cat /x/stacey/Thesis/Laser/top.thesis>top

This command would go to the CA machine (ns ca), print out the file top.thesis (cat /x/stacey/Thesis-/Laser/top.thesis), and then create a local file called top ( > top).

If you are used to nroff'ing a file, please note that the laser printers use a -n option to lpr, rather than -l. The -n option converts the troff output to commands the laser can understand. Failure to use the -n flag results in the printing of pages and pages of troff code which is unintelligible to the average human. Thus a command like

               troff -Tpsc -mm filename > file.out

would require

                      lpr -Pea2 -n file.out

to be properly printed. This is equivalent to:

             troff -Tpsc -mm filename | lpr -Pea2 -n
                               or
                mmt -Tpsc filename | lpr -Pea2 -n

However you do not need the -n option, if you are doing something that passes through a filter that converts the output, such as

               screendump | sunimp | lpr -Pei3 -l

which would make a screen dump of a Sun session and send it to the ei3 laser printer.

Another sample thesis written by Bobbi Mooney can be found in

                   mg: /usr/custom/lib/Thesis.

This directory contains source files that can produce either nroff or troff output. Check the README file before getting started.

Ask for ECN #81 A Thesis Skeleton Using -mm Macros at the reference desk in Potter Library, if you would like to see a sample thesis with its source files.

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