This is a quick and rough guide to making a new theme under Manakin.

Theme tutorial

There is a theme tutorial.pdf at the Manakin homepage @ Texas A&M

NOTE

*NOTE I am new to this - so please be aware there may be errors. You are welcome to fix any you find. The configuration files (sitemap.xmap, xmlui.xconf, etc.) all have useful comments, and the real documentation is coming soon. *

Note 2: Unlike editing dspace JSP pages to change the look of your site, it seems you can edit all these files 'in place' in your tomcat/webapps/manakin/themes folder without redoing ant to build the *.war files. You still need to restart tomcat. (I assume cocoon 'compiles' the stylesheets or something)

What you need to know to do this

Install Manakin.
Have the basics of reading XML - identify tags, comments, etc.
Understand paths/realtive paths - ../ etc.
Understand HTML.

Make a new theme folder

In t{{omcat/webapps/manakin/themes/}} make a new folder for your new theme.

I just copied the 'Reference' theme into my folder

 cp -r Reference MyNewTheme

My changes to 'MyNewTheme' were;

• add my collection logo to the theme folder
• update the style.css
  • change the logo reference to my new logo and change the css so it all fit

update your themes sitemap.xmap

In your theme change sitemap.xmap thus:

               <map:component-configurations>
                       <global-variables>
 especially this line>           <theme-path>MyNewTheme</theme-path>
 >                               <theme-name>My Collection Theme</theme-name>

update /dspace/config/xmlui.conf

reference and changing my /dspace/config/xmlui.conf with a line
specifying a theme and collection handle.

     <theme name="TerritoryImages" handle="123456789/3" path="MyNewTheme/"/>

This has to go before the exitsing global theme declaration or it will be overidden.

eg

    <themes>
      <theme name="MyNewTheme" handle="123456789/3" path="MyNewTheme/"/>
      
      <theme name="Default Theme" regex=".*" path="Reference/"/>
    </themes>

Finally you should shutdown/restart TOMCAT.

Note: Once you configured your sitemap and xmlui.xconf you can modify the css and the xsl of your site and changes take effect in real time (working with the themes inside tomcat/webapps) (thanks to Paulo Jobim for this tip)

Making changes

1. You will need your own stylesheet: something.xsl
2. You will need to edit your sitemap.xmap file to point to it.
3. You will probably want to start with inheriting stylesheet from the default (like reference does)
4. Start adding XSLT to your something.xsl file

That's it for now - I hope to add more as I learn.