What software is helpful for writing a masters thesis?
This previous question is specifically about macs, but many of the answers aren’t mac specific. This one is slightly more general but likely also useful. I also recommend you find a good template for your thesis which matches all the requirements your school has; they really do measure those margins, so save yourself the trouble and get a template that has those requirements built in (ask other students at your school if you can’t find one).
I’m not familiar with the software you are using, but you must give due consideration to two universal problems and find good tools that fit with your system: backup and version control. I would use rsync and svn on flat text latex and bibtex files, but this is probably a non-optimal solution for you.
Zotero is very useful. It can pull bibliographic information out of many library catalogues and websites, which is an easy way to manage a reading list of resources. I managed to use it to do the footnotes and bibliography in my MA thesis, and it was hugely convenient not to have to edit everything by hand. The downside is that using it to put fully-formatted citations into your document can be difficult. Editing the style sheets has a steep learning curve and I found it handles doing ‘Ibid’ and short citations quite badly. Synchronization between browsers is currently non-existent. It’s always in development, though, so these criticisms might not remain valid for long. Good backup software is essential. I use SyncBack to do my entire hard-drive.
