A LaTeX thesis template for TU Dresden following the Corporate Design guidelines. Based on KOMA-Script (scrbook), with custom packages for the title page, heading style, chapter sidebar markers, and TUD color palette. Edit thesis.tex, preamble.tex, minted.tex, and the files under sections/ — template infrastructure in tex-sty/ should stay untouched.

Maintaining the template itself? See tex-sty/README.md.

• A modern TeX distribution (TeX Live 2022+ or MiKTeX 22+) with the full package set
• LuaLaTeX (recommended) or pdfLaTeX
• biber for bibliographies
• minted uses Pygments, so compile with -shell-escape (the included Makefile already sets this)

latexmk -lualatex thesis

Then edit:

• thesis.tex — metadata (title, author, supervisors, date) and chapter inputs
• sections/abstract.tex, sections/introduction.tex, sections/appendix.tex — your content
• bibliography.bib — your citations

thesis.tex              Main document — edit metadata and chapter inputs here
preamble.tex            Package setup — see "What's pre-configured" below
bibliography.bib        BibLaTeX database
minted.tex              minted code-style defaults
lst.tex                 listings code-style defaults (legacy alternative)
.latexmkrc              latexmk config
Makefile                make targets: all, clean, latexdiff, textidote, sources-zip
sections/
  abstract.tex
  introduction.tex      Example chapter with usage examples (rename/replace)
  appendix.tex
figures/                Images and graphics (TUD logos in blau/weiss × de/en variants)
tex-sty/                Template infrastructure — see tex-sty/README.md

latexmk -lualatex thesis

If you compile without latexmk, set TEXINPUTS manually:

TEXINPUTS=./tex-sty//: lualatex -shell-escape thesis.tex

The Makefile exposes additional targets:

make              # build thesis.pdf via latexmk
make clean        # remove latex aux files
make cleanall     # + remove minted cache, bbl, sources.zip
make latexdiff    # build latexdiff.pdf (requires latexdiff.tex)
make textidote    # run grammar/style check, output HTML
make sources-zip  # pack all used source files into sources.zip

Switch between English and German by changing two lines in thesis.tex:

\documentclass[ngerman, ...]{scrbook}
\usepackage[ngerman]{babel}

Affected text: thesis-type label, supervisor/reviewer labels, submission-date label, statutory declaration, abstract heading, research-question title tab.

Set in thesis.tex before \maketitle:

\faculty{<faculty name>}
\institute{<institute name>}
\chair{<chair name>}
\title{<thesis title>}
% \subtitle{<subtitle>}

\thesis{master}            % master | bachelor | diploma | phd — also sets accent colors
\graduation[<degree>]{<full degree name>}

\author{<your name>}
\matriculationnumber{<matriculation number>}
\email{<email>}

\supervisor{<name> \and <name>}   % multiple supervisors via \and
\professor{<professor name>}
\reviewer{<reviewer name>}
\date{<submission date>}

The default style is shapes (variant 5, Dunkelblau background, Brilliantblau shape). Override with \titlestyle before \maketitle.

unicolor — full-page solid color background; text and logo color auto-selected.

\titlestyle{unicolor}                                  % Brilliantblau background (default)
\titlestyle[<bgcolor>]{unicolor}                       % custom background color
\titlestyle[<textcolor>][<bgcolor>]{unicolor}          % custom background + explicit text color

shapes — full-page background with the TUD CD logo-mark shape overlay.

\titlestyle{shapes}                                          % tonal scheme, variant 5 (default)
\titlestyle[<variant>]{shapes}                               % tonal, custom variant (1–5)
\titlestyle[<variant>][<scheme>]{shapes}                     % scheme: accent | tonal
\titlestyle[<variant>][<text>][<shape>][<bg>]{shapes}        % full custom colors

legacy — white background, no shapes, Brilliantblau accent (the pre-CD look).

\titlestyle{legacy}

Fine-tune shape placement after \titlestyle:

\titleshapevariant{<1–5>}              % apply a numbered preset
\titleshaperotation{<0–7>}             % rotation in steps of 45° (e.g. 2 = 90°)
\titleshapescale{<factor>}             % scale factor (1 = natural page-width proportional size)
\titleshapeoffset{<x>}{<y>}            % X/Y offset from page center (e.g. 10mm, -20mm)

Adding a new style or shape variant? See tex-sty/README.md § Extending the template.

\logovariant{de}           % switch to German logo (default: auto from babel language)
\logocolor{weiss}          % force white logo (default: auto-detected from bg color)
\titlebgcolor{Gruen1}      % change background color after \titlestyle
\titleshapecolor{Violett1} % change shape color after \titlestyle
\titletextcolor{black}     % override lower-block text color after \titlestyle

Each element is controlled via KOMA's \setkomafont / \addtokomafont. Four elements reuse standard KOMA names; two (tudorgunit, tudmeta) are specific to this template:

Colors default to the active \titlestyle and update automatically. Examples:

\setkomafont{title}{\fontsize{28pt}{33pt}\selectfont\bfseries\color{Rot1}}
\addtokomafont{tudmeta}{\itshape}
\setkomafont{author}{\Large\bfseries\color{white}}

Headings default to Brilliantblau. To use black headings:

\renewcommand{\headingcolor}{black}

\thesis sets an accent color that is automatically applied to the chapter thumb markers and research-question boxes. \titlestyle does the same from the title page background color. Both sync derived colors via \tudupdatecolors.

To override after \thesis or \titlestyle:

\renewcommand*{\chapterthumbboxcolor}{<color>}  % chapter thumb background
\renewcommand{\researchquestioncolor}{<color>}  % research-question frame + fill

If \titlestyle is called inside the document body, call \tudupdatecolors afterwards to re-sync.

How the sync works internally → tex-sty/README.md § Color flow.

All TUD CD colors are defined in tex-sty/tud-colors.sty and available as xcolor names:

The 1 suffix is the bold variant; 2 is the pastel variant. Grayscale numbers are approximate lightness percentages.

Worked examples for everything below live in sections/introduction.tex.

The research-question environment renders a styled tcolorbox with a title tab that follows the active title-page color. Title text is bilingual (DE/EN) via babel.

\begin{research-question}
  \item Do we live in the Matrix?
  \item Based on \cite{gos_2020}, is it actually possible to answer the first question?
\end{research-question}

Rename the title tab:

\renewcommand{\researchquestiontitle}{Forschungsfragen}

\confirmation renders a bilingual statutory-declaration page using \author and \date. Drop it anywhere after \maketitle:

\confirmation

Code is rendered via minted (Pygments-backed). Requires -shell-escape (the Makefile sets this).

\begin{minted}{python}
def hello():
    print("world")
\end{minted}

Global style defaults live in minted.tex (font size, line numbers, frame, breaklines). Edit there to change every listing at once. If you prefer listings, a lst.tex configuration exists as a drop-in alternative — \input{lst} instead of \input{minted} in preamble.tex.

Preconfigured packages:

• Figures: graphicx, svg, floatrow
• Tables: booktabs, tabularx, tabulary, longtable, multirow
• Captions: caption (hang format, raggedright, sans-serif label)
• Cross-refs: cleveref (use \Cref{fig:foo}, \cref{tab:bar})
• Theorem environments: lem (Lemma), thm (Theorem), defs (Definition) — all wired up with cleveref names
• Margin notes: todonotes (\todo{...}, \todo[inline]{...}, \missingfigure{...})
• Quotes: csquotes (use \enquote{...} — renders correctly per language)

These files are set up so most theses don't need to touch them. Touch them only when adding a package that isn't here, or changing a global default.

• Bibliography — biblatex (alphabetic style, biber backend, hyperref-aware)
• Links — hyperref with hidelinks (clickable but no ugly boxes)
• Cross-references — cleveref (capitalise, name-in-link, no abbreviations)
• Typography — microtype, one-half line spacing, isodate for ISO dates
• Page layout — geometry with inner 1.5 cm, outer 3 cm, top 1.5 cm, bottom 2.5 cm; include head
• Fonts — Noto Sans/Serif (noto package); T1 font encoding under pdfLaTeX
• Code listings — minted with \footnotesize, left-aligned line numbers, line breaking, tabsize 2 (see minted.tex)
• Floats — floatrow (replaces float), plaintop table style
• Lists — enumitem with noitemsep defaults
• Title page + headings + chapter thumbs + research-question + statutory declaration — tud-colors, tud-titlepage, tud-thesis

The package load order in preamble.tex is deliberate. Don't reorder lines without reading tex-sty/README.md § Load order.

• no output PDF file produced or minted errors → compile with -shell-escape (use the Makefile or latexmk).
• Package noto not found → install noto via your TeX distribution's package manager (tlmgr install noto).
• Fonts look wrong or engine errors → use LuaLaTeX (latexmk -lualatex thesis); pdfLaTeX works but LuaLaTeX has native OpenType.
• Code listings show stale content after edits → run make clean to drop the _minted/ cache, then rebuild.