Document Classes ⇒ Document class for a laboratory report ?

[Cham]

I need to create a document that looks like a laboratory report, to show my students how to make such kind of documents, which are very easy to create using Word/Office or any wysiwyg text document processor.

The paper must have a front page, with a bold title at about 2/3 of the height of the page, with two names centered under the title. The names must be in a vertical list, not both on the same line.

There must be a date in the upper-right corner, and another name centered at the bottom of the title page.

The document is one side only, and has a margin of one inch all around (of course, the pages are 8.5" X 11").

The second page must have an introduction sub-title in bold, placed to the left, and a text paragraph under it. There is no table of contents, and the text is in a single column. The rest should be pretty standard.

The page number should be centered at the bottom or in the bottom-right corner.

How should I create this document in LaTeX ? What should be the best class ? Any suggestion ?

[Johannes_B]

Best class might be article, or report.
The tilepage, can be designed easily, as well as the rest.

You are an experienced user, where exactly do you need help?

Right now, you are asking for different things and the answer is: Yes, you can do that with LaTeX.

[Cham]

Well, I don't know how to make the title page, within the same code as the rest of the paper (article or report, say).

[Johannes_B]

Please have a look at Title creation on the wikibook (and the links to examples), as well as How to customize my titlepage.

[Cham]

I'm an "experienced" user only at doing maths, pictures and tables, not at creating new document types.

From the code below, the date doesn't appears at a proper location. It's currently too close to the first line of text and it should be higher (inside the title page header ?) :

Code: Select all

Code, edit and compile here:

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\documentclass[12pt,oneside]{report}
\usepackage[total={6.5in,10in},left=1in,top=0.5in,includehead,includefoot]{geometry}
\begin{document}
\begin{titlepage}
    {\hfill \today \par} % Date to be fixed
    \centering
    {\scshape\large A line of text \par}
    \vspace{1in}
    {\scshape\large Another line of text \par}
    \vspace{1in}
    {\huge\bfseries Big title \par}
    \vspace{0.5in}
    {\large Name 1 \par}
    {\large Name 2 \par}
    \vfill
    {\large Some name}
\end{titlepage}
\section{Title}
bla bla bla
\end{document}
 
 
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Run LaTeX here

Note : I'm unable to get an output from the overleaf and this code. I don't know why. The code is working great on my computer.

[Stefan Kottwitz]

Hi Cham,

this code works on Overleaf. Just click the link above the code box here. I tried it.

Btw. the report class is for big reports. It's chapter based, that's why your section is 0.1 instead of 1, since it's in chapter 0 because you did not use a \chapter command. I guess the article class would be better for your case.

Stefan

[Johannes_B]

From just looking at your statements, i thought you would be looking for something like this.

[Cham]

Yes ! This is very similar to what I'm looking.

Here's the code for reference :

Code: Select all

Code, edit and compile here:

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\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[letterpaper,margin=1in,
%showframe
]{geometry}
\usepackage{blindtext}
\begin{document}
\begin{titlepage}
    \hfill \today
    \vspace{.2\textheight}
    \begin{center}
        {\LARGE\bfseries Title of the report\par}
        \vspace{3cm}
        Carl Capybara \par
        Walter Wombat \par
    \end{center}
    \vfill\centering Philip Platypus \par
\end{titlepage}
\section{Equipment}
\blindtext
\end{document}
 
 
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XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Run LaTeX here

I think this is it ! Thanks a lot for the reference !

[Cham]

Oh sorry Stefan, I overlooked your comment. Yep, the article class appears to be a better fit for my specific need. Thanks !

About the overleaf, I'm experiencing a curious glitch on my browser, apparently. I'll check this later.