Using APA7 with usmthesis

Following up from the previous post Using APA7 with umalayathesis, but about usmsthesis. Likewise, I am hoping (against hope?) that one day, apacite package will be updated to support APA7, so that usmthesis.cls won’t need to undergo overhauling either.

But until that day comes, if you need to use APA7 with usmthesis now, then it may actually be easier to make the following changes within usmthesis.tex itself (don’t modify usmthesis.cls).

Add these lines before \documentclass.

\RequirePackage{scrlfile}
\PreventPackageFromLoading{apacite,multibib}
\AfterClass{book}{
  \RequirePackage[style=apa,natbib]{biblatex}
  \let\bibsep\bibitemsep
  \addbibresource{mybib.bib}
}

Remove these lines from usmthesis.tex: (They may be far away from each other; look carefully for each line in your .tex)

\newcites{own}{List of Publications}
\bibliographystyle{apacite}
\bibliographystyleown{apacite}
\bibliography{mybib}

Where you had \bibliography{mybib}, write instead:

\printbibliography[heading=bibintoc]

If you have lists of your own publications, remove these lines too:

\nociteown{lim:2007,lim:latextypesetting}
\bibliographyown{mybib}

and write instead:

\begin{refsection}
\nocite{lim:2007,lim:latextypesetting}
\printbibliography[title={List of Publications},heading=bibintoc]
\end{refsection}

After making these changes, delete the previously generated .bbl files (if any) in the directory.

Then run pdflatex, biber, pdflatex, pdflatex. Note that the biber processor must be used instead of bibtex now.

(If compiling on Overleaf, it should all “just work” because the build tool knows which processor to use.)

USMThesis Updated (Again)

Following the most recent feedback from the Main Campus, USMThesis has been updated to v1.6.3 today. The changes this time are in usmthesis.tex, where the List of Publications is moved after the appendices (so now Main Campus and Engineering Campus are on the same page now!) Pun unintended.

Looking at the ChangeLog, usmthesis v0.1 was Nov 2005 — so it’s been 10 years!! In fact if anyone wants to host a meetup/talk or something, ping me.

USMThesis Updated

USMThesis has been updated to v1.6.2, following feedback from IPS that the page numbering of appendices should be turned off in the table of contents.

If you already have the template (v1.6.1) from September 2015 and don’t want to re-download the template again now, just add these lines before \appendix in your thesis.tex:

\addtocontents{toc}{\protect\cftpagenumbersoff{part}}
\addtocontents{toc}{\protect\cftpagenumbersoff{chapter}}

Also, from recent feedback, it looks like Main Campus-IPS requires the List of Publications before the abstracts; while the Engineering Campus IPS requires the List of Publications after the appendices. So do check with IPS of your respective campuses before you print your entire thesis!

Another thing — when printing out the PDF, do remember to set paper size to A4, and Scaling to 100% or None in the Print dialog. Many PDF viewer applications would set it to 92% or Fit on page by default, and then the font sizes would come out too small and the page margins too wide!

Gelugor, a USM Beamer Theme

Just last week, I had another Beamer-related inquiry from a postdoctoral fellow at the School of Mathematical Sciences, Universiti Sain Malaysia (USM). Was it possible to have a Beamer theme modelled after USM’s Powerpoint template?

I came up with Gelugor over the weekend. (Gelugor, Penang, Malaysia is the town where USM’s main campus is located.)

Screenshots and download link:

Brief example using the theme:

\documentclass{beamer}
\usetheme{Gelugor}

\author{This is Me}
\title{This is My Presentation}

\begin{document}

\begin{frame}[plain,t]
\titlepage
\end{frame}

\begin{frame}
\frametitle{First Frame}
My content
\end{frame}

\ThankYouFrame

\end{document}