Allow usage of godot's editor icons inside @icon() and a custom icon path inside @export_tool_button()

[Gianpy16]

Currently (I'm using 4.4.stable) the decorator @icon only allows a full path to an image inside the project. Such as the following:

@icon("res://assets/custom_icon.png")

However it would useful to allow the usage of godot's internal editor icons as all the times you don't need to create a new image to mark something like a custom singleton or a custom class.

The example could be a singleton scene manager to use the PlayScene icon. It would be fitting.

There's another similar decorator I'm aware that's the opposite of this and is @export_tool_button() which only allows an editor icon. This decorator could be extended to allow a path to an icon for completeness.

I want to propose supporting the following syntaxes to improve the editor. The engine could check if the strings is a path or not. I prefer this syntax since it reuses the already existing definitions.

@icon("PlayScene")
@export_tool_button("Test", "res://assets/custom_icon.png") var test_debug = ...

The alternative is adding a new parameter for the button and a new decorator for the icon.

# will show an error if @icon has already been used.
@icon_editor("PlayScene")
# syntax: @export_tool_button(title: String, path: String, is_local_icon: bool = default false)
@export_tool_button("Test", "res://assets/custom_icon.png", true) var test_debug = ...

PS I'm calling @icon and similar with the term "decorator" bc those are similar to python's sintax and idk if here those have a different name.

[dalexeev]

Perhaps we could add a pseudo-protocol to access editor theme resources (textures, styleboxes)? Something like editor-theme://EditorIcons/Node2D.svg.

[theraot]

A similar idea came to mind: editor-icon://Node2D. The other side of that, if that I would also be interested in using them in texture properties in the inspector.

[Gianpy16]

@dalexeev that's interesting! It could be itegrated with the load() function too so it returns a texture resource with the matching icon. Does the engine already bundles the icons inside the executable?

With a bit of auto-completion while typing from the editor would then be perfect.
It could look like this:

load("icon://Node")
load("icon://Node2D")

Then it could be also added a new resource kind that gives an enum or a popup like from this plugin Editor Icons Previewer to view and search an icon quickly.
With a resource type you're not forced to use scripting when adding an icon on an element like a sprite or a button.
I've made this mockup with the enum, but a whole popup like the plugin would be better:

There's this editor plugin Editor Icons Previewer that shows a nice popup with search bar for icons.

[Gianpy16]

Another thing that came up to mind is that the icons are SVGs but AFIK the engine doesn't allow dynamic resizing of an image. What if you need an editor icon with a specific resolution?
Last time I've checked you have to change the resolution directly in the SVG image At least it did that on 3.x I haven't used SVGs in a while.

Maybe a class could be added to specifically do create or render an editor icon image with the resolution you want. Similar to Image.create:

EditorIcon.open(icon_name, res_x, res_y) -> Texture

[AThousandShips]

Note that allowing for loading could cause problems with expecting icons to be present in exported games

Also related:

• Add option to use Editor icons from the path to icon in GDExtension #11336

[AThousandShips]

This is already tracked in:

• Allow use embedded Godot class icon for custom class via @icon annotation #9972

Thank you for your proposal and please see there for more details