SUNScholar/XMLUI Theme/Tutorial

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Back to XMLUI Theme

Overview

Xmlui-overview.jpg

Theme Expression Sequence

First a Java file per aspect is created to form the DRI in an XML format. 

/home/dspace/source/dspace-xmlui/src/main/java/org/dspace/app/xmlui/aspect

The XML is transformed via XSL to XHTML, using global transformers. 

/home/dspace/source/dspace-xmlui/src/main/webapp/themes/dri2xhtml
/home/dspace/source/dspace-xmlui/src/main/webapp/themes/dri2xhtml-alt

The XML is further transformed via XSL to XHTML, using localised transformers. 

/home/dspace/source/dspace-xmlui/src/main/webapp/themes/Mirage/sitemap.xmap
/home/dspace/source/dspace-xmlui/src/main/webapp/themes/Mirage/Mirage.xsl

Official Help

View the following for official DSpace Manakin help.

View the following for a better understanding of XMLUI Mirage theme design using the "modules" overlay method:

Development Tools

Theme path

A new feature in DSpace 1.5 is the ability to try out different themes on a particular page without having to mess with the xmlui.xconf file or needing to restart Tomcat. Two things need to be done in order to apply a theme to any page you are currently looking at.

  1. The following setting in dspace.cfg must be set to true: xmlui.theme.allowoverrides=true
  2. The "themepath" value should be appended to the end of the url. See examples below.
http://scholar.sun.ac.za/?themepath=Classic/
http://scholar.sun.ac.za/?themepath=Reference/
http://scholar.sun.ac.za/?themepath=Mirage/
http://scholar.sun.ac.za/?themepath=Kubrick/
http://scholar.sun.ac.za/?themepath=mobile/

Now check all themes rendering the discovery search page. 

http://scholar.sun.ac.za/discover?themepath=Classic/
http://scholar.sun.ac.za/discover?themepath=Reference/
http://scholar.sun.ac.za/discover?themepath=Mirage/
http://scholar.sun.ac.za/discover?themepath=Kubrick/
http://scholar.sun.ac.za/discover?themepath=mobile/

DRI Expression

You can view the DRI (DSpace Repository Interface) elements as follows per page by prepending DRI/. 

http://scholar.sun.ac.za/DRI/discover
http://scholar.sun.ac.za/DRI/statistics-home

XML Expression

You can view the XML elements as follows per page by appending ?XML. 

http://scholar.sun.ac.za/discover?XML
http://scholar.sun.ac.za/statistics-home?XML

Combined Expression

Now lets combine expressions as follows. 

http://scholar.sun.ac.za/DRI/?themepath=Classic/
http://scholar.sun.ac.za/DRI/discover?themepath=Classic/
http://scholar.sun.ac.za/DRI/statistics-home?themepath=Classic/

Getting at the raw XHTML

Moving further down the pipeline, once the XSL templates have been applied and DRI has been converted into XHTML, CSS rules can be applied to the result in order to impart a specific look and feel to the theme. This is the point where Tier 1 development usually begins. When editing the CSS, Manakin theme development is much like any Web development project. You start out with XHTML, a blank CSS and possibly a design in mind, and work with the CSS until the results are satisfactory.

Getting at the raw XHTML output of the XSL processor is easy: all browsers allow the user to look at the page source and save a copy. While the underlying HTML varies for any given DSpace page, the top-level structures like body and header remain consistent. One technique is to go through DSpace page by page, look at the HTML, and create CSS rules as necessary. Alternatively, you can extend the Reference theme that contains CSS selectors for nearly all elements encountered in the HTML structures of Manakin DSpace.

Theme Repository

Check out the following theme repositories.

References

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