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While editing the default i18n files directly is effective, the recommended approach is to capture i18n changes in your theme. This ensures that your changes to the default values are easy to find and review and also removes the risk of losing your changes when upgrading to newer versions of DSpace.

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The merge-i18n script will merge the changes captured in your theme with the default settings, resulting in updated versions of the default i18n files. Any setting you included in your theme will override the default setting. Any new properties will be added. Files will be merged based on file name, so en.json5 in your theme will be merged with the en.json5 file in the default i18n directory.

Extending other Themes

Themes can extend other themes using the "extends" configuration.  See User Interface Configuration for more examples examples.

Extending another theme means that you inherit all the settings of the extended theme.  So, if the current theme does NOT specify a component style, its ancestor theme(s) will be checked recursively for their styles before falling back to the default.  In other words, this "extends" setting allows for a theme to inherit all styles/components from the extended theme, and only override those styles/components you wish to override.

Here's a basic example:

{
    name: 'custom-A',
    extends: 'custom-B',
    handle: '10673/34',
},
{
    name: 'custom-B',
    extends: 'custom',
    handle: '10673/2',
},

In the above example:

• When the object at Handle '10673/2' (and any child objects) is viewed, the 'custom-B' theme will be used.  By default, you'll have the same styles as the extended 'custom' theme.  However, you can override individual styles in your 'custom-B' theme.
• When the object at Handle '10673/34' (and any child objects) is viewed, the 'custom-A' theme will be used. By default, your overall theme will be based on the 'custom' theme (in this case a "grandparent" theme).  But, you can override those styles in your 'custom-B' theme or 'custom-A' theme. 
  • The order of priority is 'custom-A', then 'custom-B', then 'custom'.  If a style/component is in 'custom-A' it will be used. If not, 'custom-B' will be checked..and if it's there, that version will be used.  If not in either 'custom-A' or 'custom-B', then the style/component from 'custom' will be used.  If the style/component is not in ANY of those themes, then the default (base theme) style will be used.

Removing Subdirectories / Components from your Theme

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