LyX is a free, open-source WYSIWYM interface for LaTeX. It is great for writing long documents such as theses and books. I'm using it to  write my PhD thesis, among other things.

University of Canterbury LyX document class

I obtained the uocthesis.cls LaTeX class from the Computer Science Department. It was modified by the Maths Department to include a UC logo. I then created the uocthesis.layout file to port it to LyX.

Download the uocthesis.zip archive

Ecological metadata template

I wrote a LyX / LaTeX template for ecological metadata based on the official standard for the ecological sciences:

Michener, W. K., J. W. Brunt, J. J. Helly, T. B. Kirchner, and S. G. Stafford. 1997. Nongeospatial metadata for the ecological sciences. Ecological Applications 7:330-342. [PDF]

LyX or LaTex are great for writing metadata because one simply has to fill in the blanks without caring about format. LyX or LaTeX take care of the format automatically and generate a nice-looking pdf without any effort. LyX (and LaTeX) make it very easy to add references, cross-references, tables and figures to your metadata file, and format will always look great out of the box.

The resulting pdf can be attached with your data files when you share your data sets with others, or if you want to submit your data set to Ecology as a Data Paper, for example.

See the pdf example

Download the LyX template or the LaTeX template