Frontispiece with absolute positioning, usage of the textpos package

Question

I would like to write my graduation thesis in LaTeX, but I need to make a frontispiece that exactly looks like this one made with Microsoft Word:

I've tried with some environments like titlepage and the package frontespizio, but the result is very different from the example given above.

So I've thought it would have been useful to use absolute positioning, but I can't understand the usage of the package textpos. Of course I don't want the code for a full frontispiece, but which is the code (for example) to get that "Università degli Studi di Salerno" at that height and at the center of the page?

Thanks.

Luigi

Answer 1

I had the same problem you have now when I wrote my thesis, but I didn't use any of the packages you've mentioned (probably they didn't even exist since it happened many years ago).

But I read this beatiful introduction to the LaTeX world (it is written in Italian!): Una (mica tanto) breve introduzione a LATEX2ε that helped me much.

At page 77 (93 of 109) you can find a description of the parameters relative to page layout: .

If, for example, you want to reduce the parameter no. 2 of 1/2 inch you have to give a negative value to \voffset in this way:

\setlength{\voffset}{-0.5in}

But this is a very old manner to deal with these things. Nowadays packages like frontespizio (if you learn how to use them) will reduce much your work.

Anyway it has been nice to remember the days of my thesis.

Tanti auguri per la tua laurea!

BTW: I used the titlepage environment for that...

---

EDIT

Despite you have already accepted an answer, this is my old code (1998) adapted to your frontispiece:

\documentclass[11pt,a4paper]{report}
\usepackage[english,italian]{babel}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{times}
\usepackage{graphicx}

\setlength{\voffset}{-0.5in}
\setlength{\topmargin}{-0.2in}
\setlength{\textheight}{240mm}
\setlength{\textwidth}{142mm}
\setlength{\evensidemargin}{0.3in}
\setlength{\oddsidemargin}{0.3in}

\begin{document}

\begin{titlepage}
\begin{center}
  \bfseries
  \huge UNIVERSITÀ DEGLI STUDI DI SALERNO
  \vskip-.1in
  \rule{\textwidth}{1.5pt}
  \vskip.1in
  \textsc{\LARGE Facoltà di Economia}
  \vskip.2in
  \includegraphics[scale=.2]{logoUnisa}
  \vskip.25in
  \large CORSO DI LAUREA IN ECONOMIA E COMMERCIO
  \vskip.7in
  \Large TESI DI LAUREA \vskip.1in IN
  \vskip.1in
  \LARGE STORIA ECONOMICA
  \vskip1in
  \emph{\huge Titolo della tesi}
\end{center}

\vskip1.4in

\begin{minipage}{.25\textwidth}
  \begin{flushleft}
    \bfseries\large Relatore:\par Ch.mo Prof.\par \emph{Biagio Di SALVIA}
  \end{flushleft}
\end{minipage}
\hskip.4\textwidth
\begin{minipage}{.25\textwidth}
  \begin{flushleft}
    \bfseries\large Candidato:\par \emph{Nome Cognome}\par Matr.:
  \end{flushleft}
\end{minipage}

\vskip1.3in

\centering
\bfseries
\Large ANNO ACCADEMICO 2008-2009
\end{titlepage}

\end{document}

and this is the result:

Tanti auguri di nuovo!

Answer 2

As I indicated in my comment, I find title pages to be sufficiently individual as to warrant making them 'by hand' - I did this for your example below. I didn't have the Salerno logo so I put a box there instead but you can simple change the definition of \plogo to instead be \includegraphics{yourlogo}.

Hopefully it's obvious what you can change to finetune the layout.

\documentclass[a4paper]{article}

\newcommand*{\plogo}{\Huge \fbox{LOGO}}
\newlength{\drop}% for my convenience
\setlength{\drop}{1em}

\newcommand*{\titleSal}%
{
    \begin{center}  
    \begingroup
    {\Huge\bfseries\rmfamily\scshape Universita degli Studi Di Salerno}\\[\baselineskip]
    \rule{\textwidth}{2pt}\par %default baslineskip inserted between the rules
    \vspace*{\drop}
    {\Huge\bfseries\rmfamily\scshape Facolta di Economia}\\[\baselineskip]
    \plogo\par
    {\large\bfseries\rmfamily Corso di laurea in economia e commercio}\\[\baselineskip]
%   \vspace*{1cm}
    {\large\bfseries\rmfamily TESI DI LAUREA}\\
    {\large\bfseries\rmfamily IN}\\
    {\Large\bfseries\rmfamily STORIA ECONOMICA}\\
    \vspace*{2cm}
    {\large\itshape\bfseries\rmfamily Titolo della tesi}\\
    \end{center}
    \vspace*{2cm}   
    \begin{minipage}{0.4\textwidth}
    \begin{flushleft}
    {\small\bfseries Relatore}\\
    {\bfseries Ch.mo. Prof.}\\
    {\bfseries\itshape Biagio DI SALVIA }
    \end{flushleft}
    \end{minipage}
    \begin{minipage}{0.4\textwidth}
    \begin{flushright} 
    {\bfseries\small Candidato:}\\
    {\bfseries\itshape Nome Cognome}\\
    {\bfseries Matr.: }
    \end{flushright}
    \end{minipage}  
    \vfill
    \begin{center}
    {\large\bfseries\rmfamily ANNO ACCADEMICO 2012-2013}
    \end{center}
    \endgroup
}

\begin{document}
\pagestyle{empty}
\titleSal
\end{document}

This produces