Allow user to override the icon editor with their own version

[sergiovelderrain]

The idea is to decouple the icon editor from LabVIEW so users can create their own. The intention is to make it easier for people to distribute their own icon editors by only having to place code on disk and modifying an ini token.

This would mean modifying lv_icon.vi so that it contains nothing but a launcher that would load the new icon editor from a path specified on a LabVIEW INI token.

There will be a default plugin that would hold the current icon editor, the path to the default icon editor would be a part of the LabVIEW ini file on LabVIEW install.

I created a working prototype that does that here.

I want to make sure this idea gets traction before going further with this.

[sergiovelderrain]

Edit: 

An unintended feature for this would be to be able to have a standalone icon editor that you can use to modify VIs by selecting the path to them. 

Since the icon editor would already be a plugin, this can be run as standalone.

[wiebe@CARYA]

In the light of open sourcing the icon editor, this is almost a required feature.

Probably the first thing I'd do if I was working on the icon editor.

[crossrulz]

For the Open Source effort to be effective, the Icon Editor does need to be its own package. This would allow somebody to override the package with their own.

[fefepeto_kb]

Further enhancing the user experience an option shall be available that allows the user to select their preferred plug in for a given purpose.

In this case, it would be great if the development environment would allow choosing between different icon editors, providing the default one, but also providing an interface that can be used to develop other variations of it. This way there can be multiple icon editors that are available on a machine but only one acts as The Icon Editor when triggered from the environment.

[Christina_R]

The plan is to move the Icon Editor from the LabVIEW\resource folder to LVAddons, where it will be easy to install new versions that "override" the one that shipped with LabVIEW.