Provide consistent configuration for Font Awesome icons (some are configurable, others only editable in HTML/TS)

[MMilosz]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

Currently, Font Awesome icon customization is inconsistent. Some icons can be easily customized via config.yml, while others are hardcoded directly into HTML/TS files (requiring a full UI rebuild to change)

Describe the solution you'd like

Make all Font Awesome icons configurable in the same way. Ideally in a way that does not require modifying suorce code or recompiling the frontend.

Describe alternatives or workarounds you've considered

The current workaround is to override or edit templates to change icons (and checking if an icon is already exposed in the configuration).

Additional information

Few examples:

dspace-angular/config/config.example.yml

Lines 199 to 207 in a52ba24

	icons:
	metadata:
	# NOTE: example of configuration
	# # NOTE: metadata name
	# - name: dc.author
	# # NOTE: fontawesome (v6.x) icon classes and bootstrap utility classes can be used
	# style: fas fa-user
	- name: dc.author
	style: fas fa-user

dspace-angular/config/config.example.yml

Lines 215 to 230 in a52ba24

	authority:
	confidence:
	# NOTE: example of configuration
	# # NOTE: confidence value
	# - value: 600
	# # NOTE: fontawesome (v6.x) icon classes and bootstrap utility classes can be used
	# style: text-success
	# icon: fa-circle-check
	# # NOTE: the class configured in property style is used by default, the icon property could be used in component
	# configured to use a 'icon mode' display (mainly in edit-item page)
	- value: 600
	style: text-success
	icon: fa-circle-check
	- value: 500
	style: text-info
	icon: fa-gear

dspace-angular/src/app/submission/edit/pending-changes/pending-changes.guard.ts

Line 62 in a52ba24

modalRef.componentInstance.confirmIcon = 'fas fa-trash';

dspace-angular/src/app/shared/menu/providers/new.menu.ts

Line 49 in a52ba24

icon: 'plus',

dspace-angular/src/app/submission/sections/upload/file/edit/section-upload-file-edit.model.ts

Line 81 in a52ba24

toggleIcon: 'far fa-calendar-alt',

[tdonohue]

@MMilosz : I'm curious about the use case here? This seems it could make configuration very complex very quickly if every icon on every page has to be made configurable.

Currently, icons are only configurable if they are a part (i.e. subset) of another configuration. In the two examples you shared above from config.example.yml...those both come from the submission configuration section. They are necessary because the entire submission form is configurable (so the icons must also be configurable, as there's no way to standardize them). But in, for example, the admin sidebar menu, the icons are standardized because that menu is not configurable at this time.

Overall, I do agree that if an area of DSpace is configurable and it uses icons, then those icons should also be configurable. However, I'm just hesitant to say "all icons must be configurable" as that seems like it potentially adds extra complexity without a clear use case.

To put it another way, if there's a subset of icons that you feel need to be configurable (or just need to be changed because the icon is confusing), it might be good to note those in this ticket. It could be that we could tighten the scope of this ticket to only fix specific problematic icons.