Document Classes ⇒ Customizing a document class, etc.

[chcloud]

Hello, all
I have been using LaTeX for about a year now and recently completed writing my dissertation using it. Unfortunately, I'm not quite a purist and have been using Scientific Word to smooth my transition into this new realm.

For my dissertation, I was lucky enough to obtain a .cls file that I was able to modify somewhat for my specific needs.

Now, I have started a consulting company and would like to create a standardized report format that we could use. I envision this report to be similar to the article-type class which doesn't have chapters. Each report would contain something like the following:
- Title page with a nice graphic as well as the client's name/address and my company's logo/name/address information
- Executive summary page
- Table of contents page
- Meat of report broken into sections
- Appendices
- References

So, I'm looking for advice on how I should approach this problem whether that be modifying a class file or whatever. One simple thing that I'd like is to have my company's logo to be placed on every page (except the title page) in the footer along with the page number. This has been throwing me for a loop how to do this. Not sure whether I should modify class or do something more simple.

Anyway, I hope I have made my situation clear and some kind sole can lead me in the right direction. Thanks in advance!!!
Hunter

[balfonsi]

For the logo in the footer,using fancyhdr should do the trick (don't forget to convert your logo to eps format or to pdf format).
However, as you seem to want to customize more than that, I should add that titlesec is a really interesting package: it was done to entirely customize chapters, sections, and all that stuff. As a by-product, you can also customize headers and footers (not quite so powerful as fancyhdr,the author says), and there's a companion package to do the same job with tocs.

Regards,
B.A.

[chcloud]

Thanks for the advice, Baltonsi.
I will have to check out the fancyhdr and titlesec packages.
Will the correct use of these packages allow me to override the current formatting setup within the class file?

Cheers,
Hunter

[balfonsi]

I guess so, but some classes/packages may have hard-wired code. If you just use the book class, it will be OK. Anyway it lets you override the way basic latex defines things. Just experiment with titlesec,it's easy and does more general things than fancyhdr.

Btw, I also recommend the use of geometry if you have to modify the layout of your documents (margins,textwidth,...): layout parameters are more or less interdependent, and modifying some of them may have unpredictable consequences as to the aesthetic aspect of your documents. Geometry can be given a few simple parameters, such as the relative sizes of left/right and top/bottom margins, textwidth and textheight, and it computes the other parameters.

Best regards,
B.A.