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I am in the process of writing my Doctoral Thesis in Chemistry, and after writing my Bachelor and Master's theses in Word I have decided to move to a better processor. I always found LaTeX fascinating, but hard for me to learn, so when I discovered LyX an entire World of possibilities was opened for me.

I have read several topics with the same problem, but I could not find a solution for my issue. I would like to write my thesis starting from a template, but the ones I found for LyX are not suitable or not aesthetically appealing. I would like to write a thesis using the template downloadable from this page:

https://www.latextemplates.com/template/masters-doctoral-thesis

I have seen on this site that some people had the same LaTeX-LyX conversion problems, so I tried to import the proposed "template"'s .tex file using Import -> LaTeX(plain), but the main file cannot be opened. And although a main.lyx file is generated in the process, that cannot be read.

How could I use this template on LyX? Thank you very much for your help.

Troy
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Federico Floris
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    Welcome, you will need knowledge of basic LaTeX to use both, the template and LyX. Once you know those basics, you don't neeD LyX anymore. Being a chemist, normal LaTeX is imho better than LyX to make use of LaTeX packages. – Johannes_B Mar 20 '17 at 15:00
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    Completely unrelated: thesis templates, no al templates, are restricting you from your own ideas. I cannot really say this template oin particular is good. In fact, it is buggy in several ways. – Johannes_B Mar 20 '17 at 15:02
  • I wonder how we wrote our thesis more than a decade ago when such templates weren't available.... oh yes, we tried and succeeded ;-) –  Mar 20 '17 at 15:09
  • Nonetheless, I would have liked to use this template because I find it visually appealing. :) Also, I wrote two theses and succeeded before, but in Word, and I would like to try this program this time. :) My university offers an old LaTeX template as well, but I have problems with that as well. – Federico Floris Mar 20 '17 at 16:17
  • The template defines some extra commands, which are not availaable with LyX. You would need to come back to normal LaTeX to use them. I don't know how much effort it would take to port this to LyX, as i myself find LyX distracting. – Johannes_B Mar 20 '17 at 17:03
  • Advise from my side, do not use LyX with the template and try to keep as much control over your work. It is less effort in the end. – Johannes_B Mar 20 '17 at 17:05
  • Crosspost on LaTeX community – Johannes_B Mar 20 '17 at 17:08
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    Advice on my part, do not use a template with LyX and try to keep the control over your work ;) For setting up a LyX document for writing a thesis, refer to https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/328495/87201 (which describes almost the same situation as yours). It uses KOMA-Script which you can learn to customize by reading the manual. – G.M. Mar 20 '17 at 17:30
  • By the way, MDT also has an (unofficial) template. – Johannes_B Mar 20 '17 at 17:30
  • @FedericoFloris I am tempted to write it as an answer if you rephrase your question (see XY problem: https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/66377). – G.M. Mar 20 '17 at 17:45
  • Thank you for the useful link G.M., and for the suggestions, @Johannes_B. Btw, I cannot find any template in the linked MDT Github page. – Federico Floris Mar 20 '17 at 17:52
  • No wonder, there isn't any. It is the quick manual for the template linked above, the one you want to use. – Johannes_B Mar 20 '17 at 18:07

1 Answers1

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I wrote my PhD thesis in LyX, so I know how to build on such templates. (In my experience you also occasionally need to type LaTeX in Ctrl+L environments, but you can cross that bridge when your document is set up.)

I recommend you start by creating a new LyX file and adjusting the Settings in the Document menu. On the left, you can scroll through several settings categories.

Begin by changing the Document Class in the first category to Report (Standard Class) or, if that is unavailable on your system, something similar. Next, copy-paste your LaTeX template's preamble (everything before \begin{document}) into LaTeX Preamble in the last category. Press Apply and OK.

After that you should be able to create sections etc. as usual in LyX. Quickly create an MWE so you can see whether the PDF output is on the right lines. If it isn't, adjust the preamble (as well as any other document settings you mind) until you're happy.

J.G.
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