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Master's Dissertation

This is the main page for information about the 60 credit master's dissertation. Please see the CMT400 module description for further details. In particular, take note of the assessment and the syllabus, giving an overview of the various stages of the project. Deadlines are shown with your project information when you log into PATS. You will also receive further information about your project by e-mail.

Project Coordinator: Dr Shancang Li at Lis117@cardiff.ac.uk

Project Selection

In term two, you are going to select your project. Below are guides on proposing projects and selecting your project using PATS.

Deliverables

This is an overview of the expected deliverables and tasks you must execute for your project. You also find the required deliverables with their submission deadlines under your PATS project details.

  • Dissertation: A final report must be submitted at the end of the summer period. Guidance for writing this report is given in the MSc Project Handbook.

The MSc Project Handbook (available on Learning Central) covers most aspects concerning your project throughout its lifetime.

For information about submitting a report via PATS, please see the Submission Guide. Also consider Project Publication details about how to publish (or not) your project online in PATS.

If you have any extenuating circumstances, Cardiff University's rules for postgraduate taught dissertations on the student intranet apply. You can obtain an extension or a deferral.

Assessment

The mark is based on your project approach, argument, products and reflection (on equal weighting) according to the following criteria:

  • Project approach:
    • A professional approach is used.
    • Appropriate methods and tools are used.
  • Argument:
    • The dissertation is well structured.
    • The dissertation justifies its conclusions.
  • Products:
    • The products deal with the problem appropriately.
    • The products make a contribution to knowledge.
  • Reflection
    • The student has developed insight and understanding.

Your project dissertation will be marked independently by your academic supervisor and a second examiner (moderator) selected by the School on the basis of understanding of the subject area. They each give a mark out of 100. If their marks differ by 15 or less, the average is taken. If the difference is greater than 15, they meet to discuss the reasons for it and try to agree. If they cannot agree, a third marker will be appointed. You require a mark of at least 50% to pass; also, see the MSc project handbook mentioned above.

Project Selection

Project Proposals

You can take on a project proposed by a supervisor or propose your own project. The latter gives you the opportunity to work on something you are specifically interested in, but there is no need to propose your own project, and there is otherwise no difference in the requirements or assessment of the project. Note, supervisors must be a member of staff at the School Computer Science and Informatics, and supervisors available for a module are pre-assigned and visible to you when project selection starts. It is sometimes possible to add another member of staff, if they voltuneer.

As soon as you are set up on PATS, you can write your own proposals. They will be visible if they are marked as available and project selection has started (see Project Supervision for how to select a project). Student proposals are only visible to supervisors; staff proposals are visible to students on the degree programmes the proposal is intended for. Here we discuss how to write and submit your own project proposal. The process is the same for students and supervisors, and both kinds of proposals should provide the information outlined here.

You can submit more than one proposal, but please keep the number of proposals reasonable and rather make sure you write one or two excellent proposals. This will make it much more likely that you find a supervisor for your project. You can still choose a staff project later, even if you propose your own project. If you propose your own project, there is no guarantee that there will be a supervisors for it. This will depend on the quality of your proposal, its feasibility to be executed, and the supervisors' interests, availability and expertise.

To a lesser degree, this equally applies to staff proposals: there is no guarantee to find a student who can or wants to do a particular staff project, nor do members of staff have to supervise all their own proposals. However, members of staff are expected to supervise a certain number of projects (PATS indicates this in the supervisor list if the project coordinator uses that feature), and a student who does not select a proposal will be assigned a random supervisor who has project slots left. In this case, the student and supervisor should discuss what the project should be, but it is likely to be taken from the supervisor's or student's (if feasible) proposals.

Deadlines for proposal submission (and selection) are announced via e-mail and visible in the PATS Tasks section.

Projects

The purpose of the project is, in the context of the degree you are studying, to integrate various aspects of the taught material and to demonstrate your (academic) research skills and your (professional) analysis, design and implementation skills. It allows you to conduct in-depth work on a substantial problem to show individual creativity and originality; to apply, where appropriate, knowledge, skills and techniques taught throughout the degree programme; to further oral and written communication skills; and to practise investigative, problem-solving, management and other transferable skills. The management and execution of the project are the student's responsibility, but they should seek and take advantage of advice from their supervisor.

As a general guideline, a good project aims to solve a problem related to your field of study. You can pick a general area you are interested in and try to find a specific problem you could be working on. Instead of solving a complete problem, you can also work on a partial solution or some particular aspect of a larger problem, possibly simplified to make it feasible for the duration of your project and the level of the degree. If you are unsure of the specifics, you can also discuss a rough initial idea for a project with a supervisor to find something suitable that can be executed in the module context. Out of such discussions, often exciting project ideas arise.

When you choose a project, you should do so carefully to reflect the focus of the degree programme you are enrolled in, your interests (the project needs to keep you interested for its duration) and the ability of the academic staff to support you throughout your project. Projects vary widely in the problem they address and the products they deliver at the end. While the main product of some projects is a piece of software or hardware, others produce a systems model or design, and yet others may address some research hypothesis using a theoretical, computational or experimental approach. This means not every project produces a piece of software. If you are addressing a research hypothesis, your main product may be the evaluation of some experiments or a theoretical result. In brief, the better the problem you are addressing is defined, the further through the systems lifecycle you should expect to progress.

For example, a project that seeks to develop a logistics planning system for a small business or voluntary organisation would be expected to provide a fully operational, thoroughly tested program that meets all the identified needs of the client. However, a project that aims to validate a government policy in a particular area might only achieve the development of a model to confidently simulate the main factors influencing that policy and identify the research agenda in terms of specifying precisely the data requirements to allow a full investigation of the relevant factors. A scientifically oriented project may focus on the practical or theoretical evaluation of an algorithmic approach and compare it with other approaches. This may involve some implementation but does not require fully functional software.

Importantly, your project must solve a problem. That means it cannot simply produce a literature review, discuss existing solutions of some form, etc. You should demonstrate you are aware of the background and context of the problem, clearly specify the problem you are aiming to solve, work and report on how you solve the problem and evaluate your solution. Note that you may not necessarily have to achieve a positive result. E.g. if it is not clear at the start that your approach will be successful, but based on the background, it appears to be a suitable direction to explore, then your evaluation producing a negative result is still useful (of course, this is different if you are trying something that is known not to work / where it is hard to find a justification of why to try it). For a specific proposal, it can be very helpful to discuss what you are expected to achieve and how to deal with any risks with a supervisor.

Writing a Proposal

To submit a new project proposal, go to “My proposals” in PATS' navigation bar, which takes you to a section listing your own proposals. There you can add new proposals, edit or delete existing proposals and make them available for selection.

To create a new proposal, go to the “New Proposal” tab and enter a proposal title and description. If you are a student, the proposal will automatically be assigned your degree scheme (check in your profile that your degree scheme there is correct and contact the project coordinator if this needs to be amended). Staff should select the degree schemes for which their proposal is suitable from the list provided. This is important as the project must be related to the degree studied, particularly for any specialisms. Staff and students are advised to check this carefully.

When choosing a title for your proposal, make sure it refers to the core topic of your project. Do not make the title too general (like “A Computer Game” instead of the specific type of game you wish to write) or provide too many details (“A System to Manage the Selection, Allocation, Deliverable Submission and Marking of Final Year Projects”, instead of “Final Year Project Management System”).

Provide the following information in the description of your project. Note that it is expected to be plain text, and any other formatting may not be preserved or even make it hard to read; there is a 4,000 character limit. The idea is to provide a concise description akin to an abstract:

  • Two or three sentences providing the essential context and motivation of the project.
  • One sentence summarising the general problem to be addressed.
  • Two or three sentences explaining the detailed issues to work on.
  • Two or three sentences outlining an approach how to address these issues. You may extend this to include multiple potential approaches here and also indicate expected results.

Take this as a suggestion for what to write in which order. Of course, other formats can also be suitable, but the problem and approach to address it should be apparent.

In addition, the following project-specific issues may have to be addressed:

  • Describe any special resources needed, e.g. non-standard hardware, special software, etc., that are either available via university, some other source or the student may own already. If they are not available, then the project may not be feasible.
  • Indicate if the project requires ethical approval. This affects any project involving human participants, human material or human data (Human Research)
  • Any legal issues, especially intellectual property and licensing, that may apply. Note that the foreground work on the project belongs to the student, but background and sideground or industry involvement can create additional requirements. Cardiff University's research support may have to be involved for further advice, but they cannot legally represent the student.

Student and supervisor are responsible for ensuring that the project can be executed in principle. Make sure you check this with suitable risk management before you agree to do a project.

Staff may also wish to discuss the skills needed to execute the project and the skills that must be acquired during the project. Similarly, students may want to indicate that they have or are willing to acquire any specific skills for their proposed project that would usually not have been covered by the course.

PATS' project archive contains some example projects that may help you write your proposal. Note that you can do similar projects to those there, but not exactly the same.

Obviously, the project proposal must be your own, in your own words, even if there may be overlaps between problems and topics with other work; this includes project proposals from other students and supervisors. Sometimes it is possible that you can work on someone's proposal with a different supervisor. Still, you must ask the proposer for permission (and acknowledge them suitably in the documents as the source of the proposal). Generally, if there is a source for the proposal, parts of it or maybe just a useful related resource, you should cite it (author/location or URL in a compact citation format is sufficient).

Arranging Project Supervision

After proposals have been submitted, they become available for arranging supervision once selection has been opened. This will be announced by e-mail. Supervisors can then view your proposals (that are listed as available), and students can view staff proposals. You can only see proposals that match your degree, but you should question if they are suitable and potentially discuss this with the proposer. It is also still possible to edit your proposals and add additional proposals to the system (until proposal submission has been closed, which is usually done at the same time selection must be completed). Suitable navigation links will then be available in PATS to view proposals and express interest in them. Deadlines for active tasks are visible in your task list in PATS.

Initially, you should express interest in the proposals you are considering on PATS. This indicates to the proposer that you may want to do the project, but it does not mean supervision is agreed upon. Members of staff can see which proposals you are interested in, and you can see who is interested in your proposals. PATS shows a plain list of all proposals but also a list of supervisors (or for supervisors, a list of students) with their proposals and profile information. Students can also see how many project slots a supervisor still has available (if the project coordinator is using this feature). Only the supervisors explicitly listed for the module are available for project supervision; other supervisors can sometimes be brought in, if possible, which is to be arranged via the project coordinator.

Then you should contact supervisors to discuss the proposals to agree on supervision, either for their projects or your own projects, particularly if they have expressed interest. It is better to be proactive and contact supervisors early instead of waiting for them to contact you; that includes supervisors you think may be suitable for your project but have not indicated interest. Also, members of staff have limited supervision slots, and once they are gone, they do not have to take on more projects (they can choose to do more projects, of course, but those with free slots are more likely to agree to supervise you).

You must discuss a proposal with a supervisor before supervision can be agreed upon. This should be done with an in-person or virtual meeting, not an e-mail alone. If you wish to do the project, clearly indicate this to the supervisor during the meeting or later on via e-mail.

Discuss the following during the meeting:

  • The project and any clarifications on the problem or its specific version (in case there are multiple options).
  • Expectations of what should be done to complete the project to a specific standard.
  • Your degree scheme to ensure the project is suitable for you.
  • Supervision arrangements such as regular meetings and communication (project management is the student's responsibility).
  • Any special resources needed, ethics or legal issues related to the problem to ensure it is feasible to execute.
  • If you want to decide later, the likelihood of the proposal and supervisor to remain available (in the time the proposal may be taken by another student or the supervisor may run out of project slots).

The student and supervisor are responsible for the project being executable in principle, including any appropriate risk management. This should be clear before project supervision is agreed upon on PATS.

If a supervisor is happy to take you on for a project and you agree to do the project, they can select to supervise you on PATS directly. Once this happens, you have a project agreed upon and cannot select any other project; if there is a problem, please contact the project coordinator (a change without a well-justified reason is unlikely). You will receive an e-mail from PATS that the project has been created and see the project with details (instead of the proposal/project selection) in the navigation bar. The deadlines also appear in the task list.

Note that supervisors can only choose to supervise you on a project in which you have shown interest. If it is your project, they must show interest before they can select to supervise you. This is to reduce mistakes in agreeing on supervision.

After supervision has been agreed upon, the proposal accepted will become unavailable, and the students' other proposals will also be marked as unavailable. A supervisor can make their own proposals available again if they think there is sufficient scope for more than one student to work on different aspects.

If you do not select a proposal by the deadline, you will be assigned a random supervisor shortly after the selection deadline. You must then agree on a project with this supervisor, which is likely based on one of their projects still available or your project if it is feasible. At that stage, there is no other choice. This is not in your interest, as you may well get the worst possible arrangement. Even if you cannot find a perfect proposal or cannot find a supervisor for your own proposal, it is still better for you to select a proposal than not select anything at all. Note that the deadline cannot be extended as no supervision slots are available after this has been completed.

Changes to Projects

After supervision is agreed supervisor and project cannot easily be changed anymore. Many projects have a range of possible directions or approaches, which you can still select from, and these are often indicated in the proposal/project description.

A major topic change that is not within the remit of the project proposal agreed upon (and potentially refined in the project description once the project has been created) requires agreement between the supervisor and student. Otherwise, even a successfully executed project may result in failure due to working on a different topic. Usually, supervisors are flexible, and projects can be adjusted, particularly if there is a reasonable justification for it. However, they must remain suitable for the module and degree scheme you are on, and you cannot arbitrarily change the project.

A change of supervisor after the deadline of the project selection is generally impossible. It will only be considered if the supervisor becomes unavailable for a long (most/all of the term) period or similar major reasons. If there is any issue, discuss this with the project coordinator.

Deliverables

Project Publication

If you wish to make your project available online after it has been completely submitted and marked, you can specify this in PATS. On the project description page you can check “make project public”. This will generate a publication form that will automatically be added to your project. You can see the way your project (as far as it has been submitted) will appear, once published via PATS, in the “Complete Project” tab. Everything visible there will appear in the PATS archive if you select to make your project public. Examiner reports, marks, etc. will of course not be available there. If you choose to publish your project, make sure it does not contain anything you do not wish to be publicly available on the PATS site. The date by when you must finalise this is shown in the description tab of your project, at the bottom, indicating how long the data can still be modified. A copy of the publication form is here:

Note that we cannot guarantee that your project will be published via PATS or for how long it will remain available. We will also only make projects available that achieve a sufficiently high mark.

You can request to unpublish your project from the archive later on with an e-mail to the project coordinator. Make sure we can identify that it is really you. We may ask some additional questions. Note that unpublishing is permanent and cannot be reversed.

Guides

Submission Guide

This explains how to submit the deliverables for your final year project. For what to submit, check the relevant deliverable section for your project module.

All deliverables must be submitted via PATS, except for physical artefacts. Some larger datasets, videos or similar that are only for general support or context may be provided elsewhere. All submissions must contain at least one PDF file in the document files section, or PATS will not allow you to complete the submission.

Submission generally consists of two main steps: (i) upload and check all files for the submission; (ii) complete submission by clicking the “Complete Submission” button. Do not forget step (ii). You can submit as many times as you wish before the deadline (as long as PATS lets you submit), but only the last submission archive is marked, and at most, the last two submissions are kept (if you do not delete them). Any files left in the submission area are not marked, and it is best not to leave any to avoid confusion. You can keep the submission files in the submission area and keep updating them and only perform the second step once you are sure all files are complete.

After completing step (ii), we suggest downloading and checking the contents of your submission archive. In particular, the files in the PDF section are merged into a single PDF file, protected/encrypted to avoid modification and completed with any missing fonts as far as possible. During upload, PATS provides tools to check the contents of the files and also merge the files. You may want to check the resulting submitted PDF files for any issues which can, for instance, be caused by missing fonts in the original files (this means that even the original files may also not show up correctly on your markers PDF viewers). We are trying to create an archival PDF format (PDF/A) from what you submit to minimise any issues with viewing later on as much as possible.

In a submission on PATS, we usually expect a report with sufficient evidence to back up your claims such that they can be verified and reproduced in principle. Often the report with sources is adequate for this. Sometimes you may have some extra data files, videos or images for demonstrations. You only have to submit files you created yourself. No need to submit any files automatically created, such as compiled object files or binaries. There is also no need to submit files from a framework or development suite or otherwise obtained assets you are using (these can easily be referenced - they do not have to be freely available). Some extra data files may be useful to document computational and analysis results, etc. We do not have to be able to execute your code from what is submitted, as it only serves as evidence of what you have done.

File Submission

For each deliverable, PATS has two sections to submit files:

  • Document files: These must be PDF files, and each submission must have at least one of these files - this section is for the written report, including any appendices. See the PDF Guide for information on creating PDF files.
  • Support files: These are any additional files you wish to submit for your project. They are not part of the main report but form supplementary material or extended appendices. Often these are archives (we try to convert some of them to zip files for compatibility) containing code, data or computational/experimental results. Generally, uploading files here is optional, but check what you should provide with the main report carefully. For final reports, in most cases, we expect to see at least the code. Usually, we do not require any binary files generated from sources, etc.

What is suitable to submit often depends on your project and your report. Please discuss with your supervisor what you should include if you are unsure. Your supervisor and moderator can see any of the files you have in the submission area and your current and previous submission archive.

To add files to these sections, press one of the related upload buttons, which opens a separate file selection dialogue. You have a choice to use the resumable upload function, which allows you to continue interrupted uploads, but may not work with all browsers and is particularly suitable for larger files. Instead, you can use the standard direct upload, which should work with all browsers, but cannot be resumed. Once you have uploaded a file, you can view its type, file size, and checksums (to check if your upload was successful). You can further rename, delete and move the file up or down in the list in each section. You cannot move files between sections.

For the files in the document section, you can check if there could be potential issues with the PDF files. You can also combine all files in this section into a single file (PATS will do this automatically upon submission completion).

After you have uploaded at least one file to the document files section, you can complete the submission. This will generate a zip file containing all the files you have uploaded in all sections, sorted by these sections, and in order they are displayed in the submission area. The document files will be combined into a single PDF file. Your files count as submitted only after you have completed the submission. While files in the content area are visible to your supervisor and moderator, they do not count as submitted nor serve as extensions to the submission; they will be ignored.

You can resubmit at any time before the deadline (all deadlines are by 23:00 on the day shown). A resubmission will completely replace the previously submitted files and not extend the previous submission, so always upload all files into the submission area and then submit them all at once by completing the submission. You can delete the archive at any time before the deadline and also download the archive to verify its contents.

Make sure you check the contents of any files you upload in the file submission area and especially the contents of the final submission archive. Files uploaded via the network may sometimes be corrupted, and downloading them again to verify their content avoids any problems. To verify the files, you may also use the checksums. See Checksums for further information. (Some PDF files and archives are modified for compatibility and so the checksums are not the same as your local files).

Physical Artefacts

Some projects may also produce physical artefacts without any digital versions of them. Hardware or similar physical objects need not be submitted but should be suitably demonstrated via videos, images or similar material showing their function. Your report should contain sufficient information to rebuild these. Any physical documentation necessary for your project should, however, be included in the archive in a digitised format.

Anything that fits on an A4 page or smaller can be scanned and directly included in the report as a figure. For documents larger than A4, we recommend taking photos and submitting the image files via PATS. If a single photo is insufficient due to resolution limitations, you can take multiple overlapping photos of the document and combine these into a single image.

If you have any problems with this, discuss them with your supervisors and potentially with our IT Service Desk.

Extremely Large Files/Archives

We have no strict file size limitations for the submissions. But some projects may produce or use massive data sets (say >50GB) that are unsuitable for submission on PATS for various reasons. We recommend discussing with your supervisor what to do with these and if they are needed. Often it may be more suitable to submit them to a public file sharing/archiving site than keeping them on PATS and reference them from your report instead. In some cases, they may also not be required.

You may make larger files/archives available outside of PATS if they are mainly supporting or optional data. These should be clearly referenced in the report. Make sure your supervisor and moderator can view these files and provide share links as references in the report so that other examiners (e.g. third markers, external examiners) are able to access them. Ideally, of course, they would be provided via publicly accessible storage without any restrictions.

Submission Problems and Peace of Mind

After you complete the submission of your files on PATS, your deliverable counts as submitted, and you do not have to do anything else. You can verify your submission yourself by checking the provided submission archive. We do not expect any problems with the network connection, the server or the integrity of your submitted file. However, to avoid any problems with the integrity of your submission and to deal with any problems arising from the server, Internet connections or anything else that prevents you from submitting the project in time, please follow these instructions:

  • Put all the files you wish to submit into some archive file (similar to the submission archive generated by PATS).
  • Upload the archive on a private online file share, such as your onedrive linked to your university account (this is the best option, if possible), google drive, dropbox, etc. It is important that you cannot change the timestamp of this file yourself on the file-sharing site.
  • Keep this file unmodified with a verifiable timestamp on the site (at least until you get your mark returned). As the timestamp can serve as a verification that you created the file before the deadline, you can later share this with your supervisor, moderator and project coordinator if there is a problem with your submission.
  • If, for some reason, you cannot upload your files onto PATS, you can also share this file immediately (before the deadline) with the project coordinator, who will fix and complete your submission on PATS. Also, send an e-mail to the project coordinator with more information about the project, what happened, etc., so they can properly set up your project files on PATS.

Generally, sharing files with the project coordinator before the deadline works well to resolve any issues. But note that it may take some time until we can get back to you to sort out the problem.

If, for some reason, you are unable to submit your files online anywhere, there is a further offline alternative to this process as a last resort:

  • Put all the files you wish to submit into some archive file (similar to the submission archive generated by PATS). Store this somewhere safe so you can produce this file in person or later on via some file-sharing mechanism online from that storage. Ensure the file is not modified (in particular, after you created the checksum).
  • Create a checksum of this file (see Checksums) and send this checksum to your supervisor, moderator or project coordinator. It must arrive before the deadline. It can be sent by e-mail or given in person with your full name and student id. You can also give this to someone at the COMSC office. Tell them to forward this to the project coordinator. Note that it may be hard to reach anyone in person, so this does not work as a last-minute option (e-mailing the checksum before the deadline would, of course, work).
  • The project coordinator will then be in touch to arrange to receive the actual file from you and get the data onto PATS. The file must have precisely the checksum you submitted before the deadline, or it cannot be accepted.

So far, we have never had to use this approach.

You can use any file type as long as they are suitable in the support file section. However, in general, we recommend the following file formats unless there is a good reason for your project to use a different format:

  • Documents: Whenever possible, use PDF. Note the main report must be in PDF format in the document files section.
  • Sources: Sources, interpreted files, HTML files, etc., should usually be plain text files encoded in ASCII, UTF-8 or ISO 8859-1 (latin1). Other standard text encodings may be used if necessary.
  • Jupyter, matlab, etc. notebooks: consider if these are really suitable for the purpose (e.g. PDF files generated from them may be more suitable for showing analysis results) and make sure you submit them completely, including any separate data needed. They may not be viewable by your markers in any case, so are best treated as optional files for completeness/evidence of your work only.
  • Images: The JPEG or PNG formats are preferred for compatibility. An image quality of 90% is usually sufficient for JPEG.
  • Video: Use MP4, MKV or WEBM container formats. The H.264/AVC and AV1 codecs are preferred for compatibility and quality. Usually the resolution does not have to be greater than 1080p (1920×1080); 720p (1280×720 pixels) is often sufficient; 1440p (1920×1440) or larger only if high resolution is needed. Large videos may be hosted outside of PATS (e.g. on panopto), but make sure they are accessible with the information provided in the report and are not just available to your supervisor and moderator (see extremely large files above).
  • Audio: Use OGG or MP3 for lossy compression or FLAC for lossless compression. For MP3, a sampling rate of 32kbps is sufficient for voice and analogue tape recordings, 128 to 192kbps should be used for CD quality and 192 to 320kbps should be used for complex audio sources (containing a broad spectrum of frequencies). For OGG, a quality 0 is sufficient for voice, quality 6 should give you roughly good CD quality, and higher qualities (up to 10) should be used for complex audio sources only.

PDF Generation Guide

This section describes how to prepare PDF files for submission on PATS. Independent of the program you are using to write the document and create the PDF file, the PDF file must fulfil the following conditions:

  • It must be compatible with Acrobat 5, PDF version 1.4.
  • All typefaces used in your document must be embedded in the PDF file, except for the standard PDF fonts. Embedding the standard PDF fonts is optional. The 14 standard PDF fonts are Times–Roman, Times–Bold, Times–Italic, Times–oldItalic, Helvetica, Helvetica–Bold, Helvetica–Oblique, Helvetica–BoldOblique, Courier, Courier–Bold, Courier–Oblique, Courier–BoldOblique, Symbol, ZapfDingbats.
  • The PDF file must not contain any malicious software. In general, there is no need to embed any scripts at all.
  • Do not encrypt or password-protect the PDF file. PATS will not be able to process this and has its own functions to check, protect and create as close to an archival PDF/A version of the report file as possible.

We also recommend you turn off any additional image compression during the PDF generation to preserve the original image quality. Furthermore, the PDF file should be generated for 300dpi or higher (print or prepress settings are ok). Screen resolutions, etc., may be of insufficient quality to easily read or print your documents.

The method you choose to create your PDF file is up to you, of course. However, there are several methods that most people use, as described below. Following these methods will ensure your document fulfils the above conditions.

Once you created the PDF file, you are highly advised to carefully proofread the resulting PDF file using acroread, available at http://get.adobe.com/reader/ - other software may or may not provide a reliable check, even if quite often they do not cause any problems. In particular, check that the contents displayed by the PDF file do not differ from the contents of the original file in any significant way.

TeX and LaTeX

If you are using TeX or LaTeX, there are two basic options to create a PDF file: directly generate the PDF file with PDFTeX / PDFLaTeX or create the PDF file from a DVI file. For special TeX frontends and implementations for various platforms, commercial versions, etc., you should refer to the documentation of these programs.

PDFTeX and PDFLaTeX

We recommend using PDFTeX / PDFLaTeX directly by calling pdflatex or pdftex command to create a PDF file, which by now is mostly the standard for LaTex/TeX. Note that minor differences exist between these commands and the original LaTeX or TeX commands, which produce DVI files. To avoid problems, choose the version you use before writing the complete document.

TeX and LaTeX with DVI files

The standard version of TeX and LaTeX produce DVI files. To generate acceptable PDF files from these, first convert the DVI file to PostScript with the following command:

dvips -Ppdf -G0 -t a4 -o FILE.ps FILE.dvi

Then you should run the ps2pdf program to create the PDF file from the PostScript file:

ps2pdf  -dPDFSETTINGS=/prepress \
        -dCompatibilityLevel=1.4 \
        -dAutoFilterColorImages=false \
        -dAutoFilterGrayImages=false \
        -dColorImageFilter=/FlateEncode \
        -dGrayImageFilter=/FlateEncode \
        -dMonoImageFilter=/FlateEncode \
        -dDownsampleColorImages=false \
        -dDownsampleGrayImages=false \
         FILE.ps FILE.pdf

This command also works for postscript files generated in different ways.

LibreOffice / OpenOffice

If you are using LibreOffice or any of its variants to write your report, export the file in PDF format using the File → Export As PDF menu. Under the options window, you do not need to select any special options. But make sure you turn off JPEG compression by selecting lossless compression to avoid image quality problems, and we also do not recommend reducing the image resolution.

Microsoft Word

Newer Word programs offer the option to save the file as a PDF under the save menu point. You may have to install a separate option for this to work. In general, this may be the best option to generate a PDF. Make sure you turn off image compression and select at least 300dpi resolution.

If this option does not work for you, there are various more or less free programs and services to convert word files to PDF. They should be easy to find, but we do not recommend any specific ones.

File Checksums

A checksum (or hash) is a datum computed from digital data to verify the integrity of that data. Typically you use a program to calculate the checksum of a file. Then after this file has been transmitted to another location, the same checksum algorithm is used to compute the checksum there. If the two checksums are the same, it is unlikely that the data has been changed during transmission or in other ways.

You should use SHA2 checksums, specifically sha512 (to keep things simple), in case of submission problems, etc., as described in the Submission Guide. Alternatively, you can also use SHA3 or an OpenPGP file signature with your key published to the OpenPGP key servers. For other checksums, please first check with the project coordinator.

PATS at some places still uses MD5 or SHA1 checksums due to legacy reasons. These can be used to verify that there were no accidental transmission errors but are otherwise deprecated. They cannot be used to verify that offline archives have been transmitted before the deadline as they are cryptographically broken. Note that PATS modifies some files after submission (files in the document section are specially processed and changed, and some archive files are converted to zip for compatibility).

Creating SHA2 Checksums

  • Linux shell commands: shasum, openssl, sha512sum
  • Mac OS terminal commands: shasum, openssl
  • Windows command prompt: certUtil

Creating SHA1 Checksums (deprecated)

  • Linux shell commands: sha1sum, openssl
  • Max OS terminal commands: openssl
  • Windows command prompt: certUtil

Creating MD5 Checksums (deprecated)

  • Linux shell commands: md5sum
  • Mac OS terminal commands: md5
  • Windows command prompt: certUtil
masters_dissertation_guide.1526389821.txt.gz · Last modified: 2018/05/15 14:10 by scmfcl