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Can anyone recommend a LaTeX document class that I could modify for use as our department technical report series? Something in the vein of document classes from publishers (Springer, Elsevier etc) where there are commands for inserting author and other document information. But at the same time easy to customize with our logo, front page etc.

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    Virtually all document classes allow you to insert basic document 'meta-data' (author, title, etc.); but I think a publisher's own class and style files are likely the least flexible by design. If you describe your needs and expectations more clearly, perhaps someone can point you to one that would require only minor tweaks, but you might be better to create your own based on one of the feature rich classes like KOMA-Script or memoir. Technical reports don't sound like there will be too much 'fancy' stuff to implement. Will there be math? bibliographies? tables and figures? etc., etc.
    – jon
    Commented May 31, 2013 at 4:14
  • you could always start with a copy of one of the basic document classes, and add stuff to it... article.cls is found in /usr/local/texlive/2012/texmf-dist/tex/latex/base/article.cls for example...
    – cmhughes
    Commented May 31, 2013 at 4:35
  • I recommend you to use class that supports standards on technical documentation in your country. For example, in Russia this is eskdx.
    – Eddy_Em
    Commented May 31, 2013 at 4:58
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    @Eddy_Em: eskdx is the only "national" style i know of (and is probably beyond many people's capabilities on account of the language). technics says it's aimed at your requirements, but it's ages since i looked at it, so can't actually recommend ... it's available in both miktex and texlive
    – wasteofspace
    Commented May 31, 2013 at 7:54
  • If you live in the USA, don't forget that you may need ADA 508 compliance. See tex.stackexchange.com/questions/19279/latex-accessibility.
    – Andy Clifton
    Commented Jun 1, 2013 at 14:17

2 Answers 2

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I've done some technical reports with LaTeX and learnt something about it. There are some useful packages and classes in CTAN that I've tried.

The first one is refman, without recents upgrades but very powerful. Look at this sample and its code.

Another try was using KOMA-Script with some customization. Look at a sample and its code. I'm really proud of the results.

Finally, I recently found the hitec package that I'm yet trying, sorry for not offering any sample.

I hope this could help you.

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My apologies for the delay in answering to all the excellent suggesting given here. I will be using KOMA-Script scrartcl document class for the extra customization parameters and for not interfering with other popular packages (natbib, for instance).

I was hoping KOMA-Script supported a more structured way of providing author metadata (affiliation, email etc). Since that is not the case, I am going with \author{} with line breaks for separating name/affiliation/email and \and between coauthors.

Another feature I was looking for was an easy way to produce a separate cover page with the department logo, title, authors, report number etc, without cluttering the template to be distributed to authors. That will take some programming ...

Thanks again

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  • I think the 'more structured way' in the KOMA classes (which I don't really use) is with the \newkomavar, \usekomavar commands.
    – jon
    Commented Jun 10, 2013 at 19:53

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