Making changes to the Cambridge University thesis template

Question

I am a beginner in LaTeX scripting and started writing my thesis on LaTeX using Overleaf. The University of Cambridge thesis template suits me best and I am trying to make some changes to the thesis title page without any luck. Any help will be deeply appreciated.

Here is the original thesis title page:

The changes I want to make are listed as follows:

1. I want to add a line of text after the Degree Title using the font in the previous line i.e. It should read:

   A Thesis submitted for the Degree of
   "Degree Title i.e. Doctor of Philosophy"
   in the Faculty of Science // This is the new line I want to insert using the font style of the first line //

   I tried to follow the suggestion at another TeX Stack Exchange question but ran into trouble.

2. The Second issue is with the absence of roman numerals as page numbers in subsequent pages after the Table of Contents page.

Finally, I am sure I will discover a few more issues as I write along. I will try to list them here as they appear. Looking forward to this wonderful community of some timely assistance.

Edit: Latest Issue - I need to add a Summary page at the end of the final Chapter which should appear in the Table of Contents page in bold but separate from the Chapter titles and numbers. How do I achieve that?

Answer 1

The title page is configured in the thesis-info.tex file, it includes some comments describing how to make modifications. In order to address your first issue, you could replace lines 57-63 of thesis-info.tex with the following:

%% You can redefine the submission text:
% Default as per the University guidelines:
% ``This dissertation is submitted for the degree of''
\renewcommand{\submissiontext}{A Thesis submitted for the Degree of}
%% Full title of the Degree
\degreetitle{Doctor of Philosophy\\emph{in the Faculty of Science}}

One solution for you second issue is to uncomment line 79 in the thesis.tex file in order to change the page style to PageStyleII. This enables roman numeral page numbers for the page between the table of contents and chapter 1. However, switching to PageStyleII also changes the overall style of the pages which may be undesirable.

The page styles in this template appear to be defined in PhDThesisPSnPDF.cls, which would need to be modified if you want to keep the original page style while also enabling roman number page numbers.

Edit: It sounds like you want to add an unnumbered chapter which is still included in the ToC (Table of Contents). I managed to achieve this by adding the following commands to the Cambridge template:

\chapter*{Summary}
\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Summary}

If you would prefer to make the summary into single page section instead of a separate chapter while still keeping the chapter-style ToC entry style, you can instead use this:

\newpage % Ensures summary starts on new page
\section*{Summary}
\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{Summary}
\markboth{Summary}{} % Replace chapter header with "Summary"

Answer 2

Hope this helps. (I'm sure there's a better way to do it, but this will do it)

1. Inside the folder named Classes, there's a file named "PhDThesisPSnPDF.cls". In there you can look for line 1210, and you should see something like

% Submission Box
\newsavebox{\PHD@submission}
\begin{lrbox}{\PHD@submission}
  \begin{minipage}[c]{\textwidth}
    \begin{center}
      \large \submissiontext \par
      \large \textit {\@degreetitle} \par
    \end{center}
  \end{minipage}
\end{lrbox}

You can modify it, adding a new line as in

% Submission Box
\newsavebox{\PHD@submission}
\begin{lrbox}{\PHD@submission}
  \begin{minipage}[c]{\textwidth}
    \begin{center}
      \large \submissiontext \par
      \large \textit {\@degreetitle} \par
      \large \textToAdd \par% <---This is the new line to add
    \end{center}
  \end{minipage}
\end{lrbox}

Now, before the \begin{document} in thesis.tex, you must write

\renewcommand{\submissiontext}{A Thesis submitted for the Degree of}
\newcommand{\textToAdd}{This text uses the font of the first line, and you can change me!\\I can also do two lines}

In case you want it empty, just do \newcommand{\textToAdd}{} or remove the line you added in "PhDThesisPSnPDF.cls"

Test image!

2. With respect to the second one, I think this question tells you why, how to change it, and how to "reverse" it for certain pages. Anyway, I came up with this.

Add before begin{document} the next lines

\usepackage{fancyhdr}%<-New package necessary to modify the page style
\fancypagestyle{mynewstyle}%<-This sets a new style to display headers and footers
{
  \fancyhf{}%<-Cleans both header and footer
  \renewcommand\headrulewidth{0pt}%<-Sets the width of line in header, 0pt means no width
  \renewcommand\footrulewidth{0pt}%<-Sets the width of line in footer, 0pt means no width
  \fancyhead[RO,LE]{\thepage}%<-In the header, at the Right in Odd pages, and at the Left in Even pages, print the page number
}
%If you want to add the numbers in pages that have no number, but are NOT empty:
\makeatletter\let\ps@oldplain\ps@plain\let\ps@plain\ps@mynewstyle\makeatother
%If you want to add the numbers in pages that ARE empty:
\makeatletter\let\ps@oldempty\ps@empty\let\ps@empty\ps@mynewstyle\makeatother%<-For pages that are empty

This however, makes \thispagestyle{empty} and \thispagestyle{plain} loose their original definitions. If you want to use them, now you need to do \thispagestyle{oldempty} or \thispagestyle{oldplain}

For more formatting options, you can ask, or you could look for the fancyhdr user's manual on CTAN.org.