Why use the Aalto LaTeX thesis template?
Despite the provocative title, let me be clear here, this isn’t a LaTeX versus Microsoft rant. This isn’t a LaTeX versus other text publishing systems rant either. This blog is about why LaTeX users writing their thesis at Aalto University should use the Aalto LaTeX thesis template and not their own template.
Teachers advising and supervising thesis work do point students to the Aalto thesis templates both Word and LaTeX templates. However, many teachers allow students to use their own layouts and templates invoking as reasoning the Finnish saying “let all flowers bloom”. In principle, this is fine, but in practice, many problems can and do arise from students using their own LaTeX files. The most common problem currently is students not producing a PDF/A standard-conforming PDF file of their thesis. Students are required to submit their ready thesis as a PDF/A-1 or PDF/A-2 file in the Aaltodoc publication archive.
What is PDF/A, you ask? It’s the ISO standard version of the PDF containing technical norms and structure that
- enables long-term archiving of the PDF file—hence the A as in archive in PDF/A—and
- makes the content of the file accessible to people with impairments using electronic devices aiding them to access the content.
Roughly speaking, the PDF/A standards that are currently in use are divided into two categories (or levels in PDF parlance): PDF/A-nb, where b stands for basic, and PDF/A-na, where a is for accessible. ‘n’ is 1, 2, or 3 and refers to the standard version, 1 being the oldest and 3 the newest. Actually, the newest version of the standard is 4, and it no longer has the subdivisions b and a, but it isn’t in commercial use yet, as far as I know. However, I digress. If you want to delve deeper into the details of PDF/A, an easy place to begin is the Wikipedia article on the subject.
So, why use the LaTeX Aalto thesis template? Because the template contains the infrastructure required for the resulting PDF file to conform to the PDF/A-2b standard. (Currently, LaTeX supports producing PDF/A-1b and PDF/A-2b types of PDF/A files, and these LaTeX-created PDF/A files already contain some features that make them more accessible than just plain PDF/A-1b or PDF/A-2b files.) In addition to using the template, the student must be aware of several additional issues to successfully create a PDF/A file. These issues are described in the template file. The instructions in aalto.fi directed towards LaTeX users has tips to keep in mind to minimise the risk of the PDF/A file being defective after compilation. So, students using their own template must make the extra effort to ensure that their resulting PDF file conforms currently to the PDF/A-1b or PDF/A-2b standard.
There is another reason to use the template, perhaps a more important one in the long term. As LaTeX technology develops and the solutions to make the LaTeX PDFs more accessible stabilise, they will be incorporated into the Aalto LaTeX thesis template, the goal being full-fledged PDF/A-2a conformability. Again, these accessibility-related issues are things that students must be aware of so as to incorporate them into their own templates.
What, then, is all the fuss about a PDF file being accessible, you ask. Well, your student probably and perhaps you want their thesis to be read or accessed by as wide an audience as possible, even by someone who may have, say, their eyesight impaired. Also, Finnish law requires that digital content published by an institution is accessible to everyone, which is rather problematic since the student isn’t obliged to produce accessible material. Nonetheless, as members of an institution bound by this law, we provide students with the necessary tools and support and encourage students to write their theses as accessible documents. We already require students to submit their theses as PDF/A files, so this isn’t really an issue.
