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Can We Standardize LaTeX? : Discovering Patterns in Real-World Repositories
Griepsma, B. (2025) Can We Standardize LaTeX? : Discovering Patterns in Real-World Repositories.
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| Abstract: | Despite its widespread use in academia, LaTeX lacks standardized coding conventions for organizing and formatting source files. This absence of structure can hinder collaboration, readability, and long-term maintenance of LaTeX documents. This study investigates whether consistent structural and stylistic patterns exist across LaTeX projects and explores the feasibility of developing a community-informed coding convention. By collecting and analyzing 215 publicly available GitHub repositories containing academic theses and dissertations, the research employs feature extraction and clustering methods to identify common practices. The analysis reveals several distinct usage patterns in terms of modularity, macro definition, and code formatting. These findings highlight both the diversity and recurring tendencies in LaTeX usage, suggesting that a flexible but structured style guide could be beneficial to the academic community. The study provides empirical insights that lay the groundwork for future standardization efforts. |
| Item Type: | Essay (Bachelor) |
| Faculty: | EEMCS: Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science |
| Subject: | 54 computer science |
| Programme: | Computer Science BSc (56964) |
| Link to this item: | https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/107264 |
| Export this item as: | BibTeX EndNote HTML Citation Reference Manager |
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