Implement Icon Font with Joomla 2.5 pagination.php

de-DE.override.ini

;to be placed in ROOT/language/overrides/
JLIB_HTML_START="<i class=\"fa fa-fast-backward\"></i>"
JPREV="<i class=\"fa fa-backward\"></i>"
JNEXT="<i class=\"fa fa-forward\"></i>"
JLIB_HTML_END="<i class=\"fa fa-fast-forward\"></i>"

pagination.php

<?php

 /**
 * Override Method to create an active pagination link to the item without breaking the html with complex language strings
 *
 * to be placed in ROOT/Templates/YOURTEMPLATE/html/
 * 
 * @param   JPaginationObject  &$item  The object with which to make an active link.
 *
 * @return   string  HTML link
 *
 * @since    11.1
 */
function pagination_item_active(&$item)
{
         $app = JFactory::getApplication();
         if ($app->isAdmin())
         {
                   if ($item->base > 0)
                   {
                            return "<a title=\"" . strip_tags($item->text) . "\" onclick=\"document.adminForm." . $this->prefix . "limitstart.value=" . $item->base
                                      . "; Joomla.submitform();return false;\">" . $item->text . "</a>";
                   }
                   else
                   {
                            return "<a title=\"" . strip_tags($item->text) . "\" onclick=\"document.adminForm." . $this->prefix
                                      . "limitstart.value=0; Joomla.submitform();return false;\">" . $item->text . "</a>";
                   }
         }
         else
         {
                   return "<a title=\"" . strip_tags($item->text) . "\" href=\"" . $item->link . "\" class=\"pagenav\">" . $item->text . "</a>";
         }
}

function pagination_item_inactive(&$item)
{
         $app = JFactory::getApplication();
         if ($app->isAdmin())
         {
                   return "<span>" . $item->text . "</span>";
         }
         else
         {
                   return "<span class=\"pagenav\">" . $item->text . "</span>";
         }
}

Hans this is wonderful!
What needs to be done to adjust this for joomla 3.x?
With original code it works in joomla 3.9 but I am afraid to use it since it has some deprecated code.