Manual

Book Project Structure

The template uses a Quarto book project. Your thesis is split into multiple .qmd files — one per chapter — which are combined during rendering. The chapter order and all metadata are configured in _quarto.yml.

Chapter files

Chapter files are numbered to reflect their order:

File	Role
`index.qmd`	Title page (HTML) + TOC (Typst only)
`1-zusammenfassung.qmd`	Abstract / Zusammenfassung
`2-einleitung.qmd`	Chapter 1: Introduction
`3-literatur.qmd`	Chapter 2: Literature review
`4-methoden.qmd`	Chapter 3: Methods
`5-ergebnisse.qmd`	Chapter 4: Results
`6-diskussion.qmd`	Chapter 5: Discussion
`references.qmd`	Bibliography
`7-anhang-rohdaten.qmd`	Appendix A
`8-anhang-statistik.qmd`	Appendix B

You can add, remove, or rename chapter files. Just make sure to update the chapters: and appendices: lists in _quarto.yml accordingly.

`_quarto.yml` configuration

The _quarto.yml file is the central configuration for your thesis. It defines:

Chapter order — under chapters: and appendices:
All metadata — title, author, supervisors, etc.
Format settings — output format options

See Section 1.2 for all available metadata fields.

Metadata

All metadata fields are set in _quarto.yml (not in individual chapter files).

Standard Quarto fields:

Field	Description
`title`	Title of the thesis (under `book:`)
`subtitle`	Optional subtitle (under `book:`)
`keywords`	Optional list of keywords for the titlepage
`lang`	Language of the thesis, only `en` or `de` supported
`bibliography`	the .bib file containing bibtex entries
`author`	multiple authors supported as a YAML list (under `book:`)

Note that switching the lang field will also change the language of some of the automatically generated text. For example, ZHAW will be displayed as follows depending on the lang field:

German (default): “ZÜRCHER HOCHSCHULE FÜR ANGEWANDTE WISSENSCHAFTEN”
English: “ZURICH UNIVERSITY OF APPLIED SCIENCES”

Additional fields provided by this template:

Field	Description
`institut`	in titlecase, e.g. “Institut für Umwelt und Natürliche Ressourcen”
`thesis-type`	e.g “Projektarbeit 2”
`degree-type`	e.g. “Bachelorstudiengang”
`study-year`	e.g. “2009”
`submission-date`	e.g. “2024-12-15”
`study-direction`	e.g. “Umweltingenieurwesen”
`supervisors`	with title, name and affiliation
`confidential`	`true` marks the thesis as confidential. default is `false`
`zhaw-cover-image`	optional. Has configurable sizing options (see example below)

Cover Image Configuration

Basic usage:

zhaw-cover-image:
1  src: cover.png
2  max-width: 100%
3  max-height: 5cm

1: src: Path to the image file
2: Maximum width constraint (optional, default 100%)
3: Maximum height constraint (optional, default 5cm)

Default settings

The template sets a number of default settings to match the ZHAW requirements. These include:

1mainfont: Arial
2fontsize: 11pt
3citeproc: true
4section-numbering: "1.1."
5number-depth: 2
6toc-depth: 2
7toc: false
8execute:
9  echo: false
10  warning: false
11  error: true

1: Default font set to Arial (ZHAW requirement)
2: Default font size 11pt (ZHAW requirement)
3: Use Pandoc’s citation processing rather than typst’s built in style more information
4: Number sections in the decimal style
5: Only number the first two header levels
6: Number of levels in the table of contents (toc)
7: Don’t render a toc automatically (we’ll do it manually using shortcodes, see below)
8: Sets the cell execution options
9: Don’t show the chunk code in the document
10: Don’t show warnings from code chunks
11: Don’t stop the rendering process if an error occurs in the code chunk. Rather, just show the error in the output document

Font configuration

The template does not set a default font — Typst will use its built-in default. ZHAW recommends Arial 11pt but does not require it. To use a specific font, set mainfont in your _quarto.yml:

format:
  zhaw-lsfm-typst:
    mainfont: "Arial"
    fontsize: 11pt

If the font is not installed on your system, place the font files (.ttf or .otf) in the _extensions/zhaw-lsfm/fonts/ directory and Typst will find them automatically.

Appendix configuration

Appendix chapters are listed under appendices: in _quarto.yml:

book:
  chapters:
    - file: index.qmd
      text: "Titelseite"
    - 1-zusammenfassung.qmd
    # ...
    - references.qmd
  appendices:
    - 7-anhang-rohdaten.qmd
    - 8-anhang-statistik.qmd

Chapters listed under appendices: automatically receive A, B, C numbering instead of the regular decimal numbering. Sub-headings are numbered A.1, A.2, B.1, etc.

Shortcodes

To insert the ZHAW title block (HTML only, used in index.qmd): {{< zhaw-title-block >}}
To insert a table of contents (Typst only): {{< table-of-contents >}}
To insert a list of figures: {{< list-of-figures >}}
To insert a list of tables: {{< list-of-tables >}}
To insert a bibliography: {{< references >}}