Problem with UMinho templates in last version

[renr3]

Hello, all!
So, first of all, a huge appreciation to @joaomlourenco for this incredible work.

I am working with MiKTeX Utility 1.11 (MiKTeX 25.4), VSCode v 1.102.1, and Latex Workshop 10.10.0 (2025-06-03 update).

I downloaded the .zip file of NOVAthesis from the README.md, followed this wiki https://github.com/joaomlourenco/novathesis/wiki/Uminho-Configuration, but was not able to correctly correctly compile for any UMinho school. The covers become ill-generated and I get some errors related to tikz. If desired, I can post more details on the specific errors I get, if you explain me how you want those details.

Currently, my workaround was to downloaded NOVAthesis v7.2.1 (Oct 16, 2024) from https://github.com/joaomlourenco/novathesis/releases, since I noticed I could correctly compile in Overleaf for UMinho in this version. Then, I corrected the profiling file following (#540), and added \texprof{} to all entries of \benchmarktoc and \benchmarktic (for some reason the compiler was complaining about them and I then I just followed what was in the newest version and it worked). FInally, I could correctly compile the document and get a well-formed UMinho thesis for the school of engineering.

Does someone have a guess on why I am having problems with the newest version downloadable from README.md? Would I notice big changes if I stick to v7.2.1?

[joaomlourenco]

Please use the latest version.
Let me know if it still fails or is everything ok.
Thanks.

[renr3]

So, previously I was downloading from the main repository, which I assume is [7.3.9], and got the reported error.

Now I tried the last release (v7.3.3), and got the same errors.

The error messages are related to \ntprint{covers} and \ntprint{backcovers}, such as, among others:

l.201 \ntprint{covers}  % The cover page
I've run across a `}' that doesn't seem to match anything.
For example, `\def\a#1{...}' and `\a}' would produce
this error. If you simply proceed now, the `\par` that
I've just inserted will cause me to report a runaway
argument that might be the root of the problem. But if
your `}' was spurious, just type `2' and it will go away.

The same pattern repeats for \ntprint{backcover}.
Besides the above, multiple TikZ-related and Dimension overflow errors are also reported in the .log file.

My configuration:

School: University of Minho (uminho)
Degree: Engineering School (eeng)
Using XeLaTeX compilation

If I can give a wild guess, it looks the issue is in the cover generation system, specifically with brace matching in the @ntcoverelement@iii macro.